


Born in the Blood

by Dira Sudis (dsudis)



Series: In a Lifetime of Chance [1]
Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Child Abandonment, Child Neglect, HYDRA geneticists are terrible quasi-parents is what I am saying here, Implied/Referenced Rape/Non-con, Kid Fic, M/M, Not Captain America: Civil War (Movie) Compliant, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, Post-Avengers: Age of Ultron (Movie), Tags May Change
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-05-23
Updated: 2017-08-14
Packaged: 2018-06-10 08:03:40
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 14
Words: 61,703
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6946768
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dsudis/pseuds/Dira%20Sudis
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>HYDRA went back to the beginning with this project.</p><p>(Currently on indefinite hiatus.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> PLEASE NOTE: This is a MUCH WIPpier WIP than I have ever posted to the AO3 before! It is not fully/finally edited, because I've only written about six chapters of it. I'm not 100% confident that the rest of the story, if written, will go the way I'm currently envisioning it, and I'm also not 100% confident i will actually finish writing it in any kind of remotely timely fashion (though I think posting what I've got ups the odds, ~~so feel free to pester me about it~~ ). The tags and rating are subject to change, and the story text itself may be edited at any time; I'll try to give notes if anything important to a new chapter is altered in a prior chapter. CAVEAT LECTOR.
> 
> ...All of that said, I thought people would like to see what there is of the very early days of Teddy's life with his assorted parents, so I'm going ahead and posting this! :D 
> 
> Many thanks to everyone who has been encouraging this story for the YEARS since I started it! <3
> 
> ETA: As of November 2017, I'm declaring this "on indefinite hiatus" until I can get my brain to focus on it properly, because, hooboy have I ever been distracted by a lot of shiny objects in the last... while. 
> 
> Story and series titles are from "Run for the Roses" by Dan Fogelberg because no seriously it's perfect for this and also I was once a horse-obsessed pre-teen whose parents listened to Oldies on the radio so I can never pry that song out of my heart.

With every lead on Bucky running dry before he could even chase it, one of the biggest effects the day of the helicarrier battle actually had on Steve, four months later, was the fact that Natasha had leaked SHIELD's entire email directory and now the whole world knew his email address. 

At first he'd tried to read all the email that came in--all of it that made it past the spam filters, anyway, which was a lot but not a totally unmanageable flood--but eventually he accepted that he couldn't respond to twenty or thirty emails from strangers every day. He skimmed them, deleted the blandly nice and repetitively nasty ones, occasionally forwarded something to Maria to find out if it was a real tip or threat. If there was a photo of a kid or a kid's artwork, he tried to respond with a few friendly lines and a selfie or a quickly-snapped picture of his shield.

He got a new, secure email address for people who actually knew him to use, but he never stopped checking his leaked address once or twice a day, or as often as he could around missions and crises. 

Everyone in the world knew his old email address, and that meant it was out there for Bucky to find, if he ever wanted to get in touch.

That was the thought that had him booting up his laptop when he got home to Avengers HQ after sixty hours in Antarctica. He'd had about six hours of sleep in the last three days, most of that on the ride home. He was nowhere near being actually rested, but he wasn't quite desperate enough to wreck his circadian rhythm further by going to sleep at six PM.

He had a couple of hundred emails, but he could plow through them pretty quickly these days--delete, delete, forward, delete a dozen in a row, block an address that had sent him fourteen angry screeds in the last three days, delete, delete, leave for later, leave for later--

_HYDRA went back to the beginning with this project_ , the email said, and there were a set of coordinates--somewhere above the 39th parallel, which put it a little way north of DC, but over 86 degrees west, which was... Steve swallowed hard and tabbed over to a new window, tapping in the coordinates to pull up a map.

The map centered at something called Camp Atterbury, but in the upper right corner of the screen was a name Steve had known for a very long time. _Shelbyville, Indiana._

Bucky had been born in that town. His folks were from there, and Bucky and his mom had moved to Brooklyn to join his dad when Mr. Barnes demobbed after the war. 

_Back to the beginning._

Steve clicked back to the email. It might not be about Bucky, although he couldn't think of anything else even remotely related to HYDRA that had begun in Indiana.

_I am very much afraid that the project is about to be terminated. This materiel should not be destroyed._

Steve felt cold. _Materiel_ might just be a misspelling for material--files, information, anything. Or it might have been used in the military sense of materiel: hardware. 

Assets. 

_This_ materiel: one asset. One asset whose beginning was in Indiana.

One asset who couldn't be found.

There was a time and date listed: _8/7/15, full dark_.

Steve hit another window, pulling up the time of sunset in Indiana and then tacking on half an hour for twilight--

He had about three hours. 

The from: field in the email was, he realized, blank. He tried the few tricks he knew to make the message headers divulge some information, but there was simply nothing there--as if an email had been slipped under his door instead of traveling through the mail. Internet. Whatever.

Steve pressed his hands to his face. Three hours was not enough time to vet this, and it was not enough time to give his team enough information to decide whether to follow him into a possible ambush or wild goose chase. It was barely enough time to _get to Indiana_ , even if he commandeered a quinjet, and he couldn't--well, didn't think it would be a good idea to--do that on the strength of a single cryptic email. He could be misinterpreting, he could--

There was an attachment, he realized belatedly. His email had blocked it from showing in the body of the message like they usually did, because the email was suspicious.

_No fucking kidding_ , Steve thought, irritated with it. At the same time his heart beat with something like panic at the thought that this message could have vanished into the spam filter, never seen. 

God, what if the weather had been worse in Antarctica? What if they'd decided to sleep a night there instead of grabbing the first available window to safely depart?

He clicked on the attachment.

The picture was small, but the quality was good enough to make his breath go out like he'd been punched in the gut. 

It was an eye--not even the whole eye, just the iris, a familiar variegation of blues and grays. Steve would know those eyes--that eye--anywhere. He had long since memorized those colors. He even knew the sheen of unshed tears reflecting the light.

"Bucky," he breathed, touching his fingers to the screen without thought. They had him, they had him and he was going to be killed tonight--

Steve could smell the rain, the army tent, the Italian mud. He made himself take a breath, and then another. He had to go. 

He couldn't go alone. He couldn't just run off. He had a team now; he had responsibilities. He wasn't just abandoning the USO tour. 

Steve reached for his phone and dialed Sam without looking away from the screen.

"Hey," Sam said when Steve raised his phone to his ear. "You need help getting to sleep, or help staying up?"

Steve was so far into a mission mindset that the warmth and ease of Sam's voice was not just shocking but baffling for a second. But of course that was what Sam thought--they'd just gotten in from a mission, Steve was calling him from his quarters on the next floor. Of course it would seem like an invitation; it was an invitation Steve would have gotten around to making in an hour or so, once he was done with his email, if not for this.

"Sorry," Steve said. "I need you for something else right now."

"Of course," Sam said immediately, his voice going calm and serious. "Just me?"

"Just you for this," Steve said, holding the phone against his shoulder so his hands were free for the keyboard. "I need you to look at your email and tell me what you see."

"Okay." There was a pause; faintly Steve could hear the sound of Sam typing, and then a stillness.

"You recognize that eye?" Sam asked.

"I do." Steve couldn't look away from the liquid brightness of it. Tears. What were they doing to him? 

"Looks like a hostage situation to me," Sam said. "Or bait in a trap. Maybe both."

"Yeah. That's about what I was thinking." 

"Also looks like a quinjet will get us there in about seventy-five minutes," Sam added. "If you still want this project between me and you we could get somebody to drop us at the airport in Indianapolis, get transport, and get there in time, as long as we leave now."

Steve closed his eyes and exhaled. "Sam, it might be..."

"I know. But there's no way you're not taking a shot at this, and there's no way I'm not with you. Am I gonna need my wings?"

Steve clicked back to the map and zoomed in, studying the terrain. "Yeah, could be handy."

* * *

Steve and Sam left the truck they'd rented at the airport on the shoulder of a county road a mile and a half away from the point marked by the coordinates in the email. Steve changed into his uniform once they were under the cover of the trees, and Sam gave Steve a lift from the edge of the trees to their target. The buildings within the fence were quiet and dark when they arrived; there was an air of vacancy about them, not just night-quiet. Everyone had cleared out.

_The project is about to be terminated._

Steve glanced up at the sky, dark blue but still holding a little light. 

"Still some glow on the horizon," Sam said through their radio link.

"We just have to find him." Steve looked over the layout. "I'll start at the south end here, you take that building on the north, we'll work toward each other."

If they'd just left him behind, if it was that simple, if he were locked up somewhere in one these buildings...

"Got it," Sam agreed, banking in to let Steve drop gently to the roof before he took off for the furthest building. Sam disappeared quickly into the dark sky, and Steve swung himself over the edge of the roof and dropped, running for the nearest door. He broke a lock and was inside within seconds.

The building had a distinctly familiar hospital air to it, with clean linoleum floors and bare institutional-green walls. Lights came on in the corridors, tracking Steve as he jogged along looking for signs of life. He passed one open door after another, all of them revealing emptied rooms. Nothing made the slightest sound but his own footsteps. When he'd toured the first floor and found nothing, he stood at a stairwell door and considered for a second. Stairs went up to a second floor and down underground.

This was HYDRA. Steve went down.

The lights stayed stubbornly off on the lower level, and Steve's footsteps seemed louder. When he came to locked double doors blocking off one end of the corridor--the only closed doors he'd seen yet--he didn't have to think twice before forcing his way through.

The sound of rending metal gave way seamlessly to the sound of a baby screaming, and Steve broke into a run. There was a closed door with a low light showing beneath it. Steve didn't even have to break the lock, only shouldered through.

The baby had climbed up onto the railing of a metal crib and was stranded there, crying and looking around in bewilderment like a treed cat with no idea how to get down. Steve rushed up to catch him before he could fall. The baby's screaming ratcheted up like an engine changing gears; he recoiled from Steve and nearly fell back into the crib before Steve grabbed him.

The baby arched hysterically away from Steve, shrieking so loudly that the building could have been shelled to the ground and Steve wouldn't have heard a thing but that siren wail. It occurred to Steve to pull his helmet up and off; the baby froze in the middle of a howl to stare, bewildered, at Steve's suddenly-revealed face. 

Steve stared right back, because when he wasn't screaming the baby opened his eyes wide enough to show their color. Steve knew that blend of blue and gray. He knew that sheen of tears.

The rest of the little face was familiar, too, so much so that it felt like a punch in the center of his chest.

He knew that bright chestnut-brown hair, silky-soft and just getting long enough to curl. Steve knew the soft contours of the baby's pudding cheeks; he'd pencil-shaded the cleft in that stubborn chin, too determined for a baby's face, about a hundred times. The pink cupid's bow mouth opened on another sob, and Steve hoisted the baby against his chest, hugging him close.

"Jesus, Buck," Steve whispered. 

There was no way the kid in his arms was anyone's but Bucky's. He was the living image of the photograph Bucky's parents had had taken when Bucky was a year old; it had been tinted, even, to capture Bucky's blue-gray eyes and brown hair, which had already been darkening to its grownup seal-brown when Steve met him at age five. Steve had copied that picture again and again, using it to learn to draw, and this baby was the spitting image.

_Back to the beginning._ Had they started over with a fresh copy? Not an ordinary child but a clone?

"We're getting you out of here," Steve promised the baby, who was already ratcheting back up in volume of wails, but had gotten hold of one of the straps of Steve's shield harness. "Shh, we'll get you out of here."

The baby had to be what the email was about--it had never been Bucky himself; that was why the photo had only shown the iris of his eye, the one feature Steve could mistake for Bucky's. They had known he would come running for Bucky, and even if he'd known he couldn't have done any less for Bucky's child.

_This materiel should not be destroyed._

They had planned to dispose of him somehow. They'd left him here alone, evacuated the buildings...

"Sam," Steve said, activating his radio as he looked around for anything that looked like explosives. "We need to get out of here. _Now_."

"Steve? Is that--"

The baby's crying must be carrying through along with Steve's voice.

"I found what we came for," Steve said flatly, turning back to the crib. "I'm exiting at the ground level and running for the fence line, and I need you to get clear, because I don't think they meant to leave any evidence."

"Heading up," Sam said crisply.

Steve reached into the crib and fished out a blanket to wrap around the baby, who screamed and sobbed and fought it, nearly breaking Steve's grip. Steve set him down after a fruitless few seconds of trying--he didn't dare use his full strength to hold on to the baby, but that meant he was going to need help keeping hold of him on the way out of here.

The clock in his head was counting down. How much light was left in the sky? What was going to happen at full dark?

Steve looked around the room--there were toys and books, a brightly-colored rug on the floor, but nothing useful. The baby was screaming louder and had pulled himself up the bars of the crib again. He was reaching for Steve and sobbing. 

Steve shook his head a little, despite everything; that was just like Bucky, always wanting whatever he didn't have. Steve picked up the blanket and tied the corners to the straps of his shield harness, making a little hammock against his chest. 

The baby calmed a little when Steve picked him up again, only to start howling and fighting as soon as Steve tried to slide him into the blanket. It took a couple of minutes, in which Sam checked in twice--" _Steve_ ," and then, " _I'm coming in there if--_ "

"Negative, get clear." The baby finally went rigid at just the right second and slid into his blanket-hammock. Steve curled his left arm around the baby, steadying him and encouraging him to curl up small on Steve's chest. "We're on our way."

When he stepped out of the lab Steve's attention was arrested by the closed doors down the corridor. There was no light behind any of the others, but he had to stop and open each one to make sure there wasn't another nursery behind it. The baby was screaming again, flailing inside his blanket, by the third one Steve kicked in, but he found only darkened empty labs and one blandly furnished room on the end, something like an efficiency apartment stripped of any personal touches--lodging for caretakers? There were no other sinister nurseries, and no sign of anyone else still present.

Steve found another stairwell at the end of the corridor and raced up it, pulling his shield as he headed for the exit. They had to be getting close to dark, and whatever was about to happen, he needed to be able to protect the baby from it.

He angled his left hand away from the baby to slide the shield onto his arm, covering his chest and trying his best to keep the baby curled behind it. He got it in place a second before he barreled through the door, and the baby went abruptly, eerily silent. Steve actually broke stride and looked down, reaching in with his right hand to feel whether the baby was still breathing, but he was. He'd just gone still when the shield settled in front of him, like a parrot in a covered cage. 

"Steve, come on," Sam said, sounding relieved. Steve looked up reflexively to see him circling overhead. Beyond him the sky was nearly black. Steve could see stars.

He burst forward in a flat-out sprint for the fence. After a few strides the weight of the baby against his chest settled into place. It was like running with a heavy weapon or a field pack; he wasn't going to set any personal records for speed, but he would outpace most things coming after him. 

"Steve," Sam said abruptly at the same time Steve heard a huge, dull thump somewhere behind him. " _Run faster_."

Steve had thought he was running as fast as he could, but he found a new gear. The fence was looming up fast, topped with razor-wire, but there was no time for anything else. Steve hurled himself up and over, twisting in midair to get himself under the baby before they landed. He rolled and came up running again, but only made it about ten strides before he saw the trees in front of him lit up by a flash from behind. Steve managed to drop and curl around the baby in the fraction of a second before the shockwave hit, sending him rolling again.

He opened his eyes and looked first toward the baby, who was thrashing and screaming against his chest even before Steve dropped his shield, and then toward the flames making the woods as bright as day. The entire facility had to have been destroyed. Any files, any traces of who had sent that message, any evidence of where this baby came from or what they'd done to him, they'd all gone up in flames.

He stared into the fire and remembered Bucky screaming, _Not without you_.

He hadn't been there. It was only the baby. Bucky hadn't been in there. Bucky had never been there. It had never been Bucky. It couldn't have been.

Steve was still staring at the blaze, the baby flailing energetically against his chest and shrieking, when Sam eclipsed the light of the fires. Steve jerked out of his frozen daze and looked up. He realized he was on his knees as Sam crouched down and said, "You wanna let me have a look at your friend there?"

Steve looked down, startled by the sight of the baby clamped in his arms. He realized that the baby had just been knocked around by an _explosion_ and tugged hastily at the knots holding the blanket-sling together. Sam made a quick catch when Steve got one end undone, saving the baby from tumbling into the dirt. 

The abrupt change startled the baby into silence for a moment, and then he caught sight of Sam's face, took a deep breath, and _shrieked_. Sam nearly dropped him, and Steve reached out with both hands, getting one behind the baby's back to help Sam hold on. He yanked Sam's goggles up and off with the other.

Just like he had with Steve, the baby was startled into shutting up by the sight of the human face revealed from behind Sam's goggles.

"Sam," Steve said in the few seconds of relative quiet, "meet Baby Barnes."


	2. Chapter 2

Sam did the first-glance triage catalog automatically. The baby looked pretty healthy, moving all his limbs and holding his own head up, no blood showing anywhere. Steve was dirty-faced and bleeding from a scrape on his forehead he obviously hadn't noticed. Sam himself was fine--still flying on adrenaline with his feet on the ground, but he hadn't so much as gotten tumbled by the blast. 

Bucky was... not here. Steve wouldn't have told Sam to get clear before the explosions started--wouldn't be outside the fence himself--if there was the slightest chance that Bucky had been in there. Steve had said that he found what they came for, and here was a baby. The conclusion was pretty obvious, really.

"Baby Barnes," Sam repeated. The baby started screaming again and Sam pulled him in closer, cradling the baby horizontally against his chest and trying to make his grip reassuringly firm. The kid had that crazy strength babies always seemed to have, and he was big enough to be heavy.

"Here," Steve said, shaking his shield loose from his arm, "try..."

He turned the shield Sam's way, and Sam did what Steve obviously wanted him to do, taking his left hand from the baby and grabbing one of the shield's grips. He didn't understand why until he pulled his arm back in and the kid's wailing went abruptly quiet.

The baby reached out a hand to touch the plain silver inner surface of it, crooning some baby babble and patting one hand against it. Sam brought the shield in closer, fascinated. It was a hell of a lot lighter than the baby, though even the baby wasn't so heavy when he wasn't fighting.

Steve said quietly, "Bucky liked the shield, too."

Sam looked down at the kid, who had curled one hand around the edge of the shield and was looking up at him quietly, more or less calm. In the uncertain light Sam could only tell that his eyes were pale-colored, but he could guess that they were the exact same color as Bucky's. Dark hair, cleft chin. Given that email--he had to be Bucky's kid, or clone, or something.

Given what they knew about HYDRA and where Bucky had been for the last seventy years, it was really only a surprise that the baby was this young, or that there was only one of him. Of course there might not be, but Sam quashed that thought and just hoped it hadn't shown on his face.

"He's Bucky's," Steve said. "That makes him my--godson, probably. My responsibility. My family. I'm pretty sure he hasn't got anyone else."

And neither did Steve. Steve had friends and allies, but he had nobody left he could count as family except maybe Bucky, and Bucky didn't seem to want to be found. It was no wonder if Steve was latching on to the Barnes he could save.

No surprise, but still a mess. They were ten yards outside of a HYDRA base in flames, they had a rescued-slash-kidnapped infant up past his bedtime, and they were two miles out from their transport. Between the baby and the likelihood of emergency response rushing in this direction, Sam couldn't risk flying them out.

"We should get a move on," Sam said. "Somebody's gonna notice this, and we don't want to be here when they do."

Steve nodded and got to his feet, coming over to help Sam up without removing either the shield or the baby from Sam's arms. He finished untying the blanket he'd had slung across his chest and held it out awkwardly. "He's gonna get cold."

Sam looked down and saw that the baby's eyes were closed, dark eyelashes fanned against pale cheeks. He still had one hand curled around the edge of the shield. He would absolutely wake up if Sam tried to hand him over to Steve.

"I don't really have a hand free, man," Sam said. "Come here and see if you can cover him up."

Steve moved in, pressing himself up against Sam's side as he reached between Sam's body and the shield to tuck the blanket over the baby. His fingers brushed against Sam's chest, and Sam was distractingly aware of Steve's breath against his ear as Steve leaned in.

They'd earned their usual post-mission hookup twice over now, but Sam had a feeling that was going to be at least as much on hold as if they'd actually found Bucky, for reasons that weren't actually as different as all that. Steve's past-and-maybe-future relationship with Bucky, whatever it had been exactly or could possibly be going forward, had always been one of the known unknowns between them.

The baby stirred against Sam's chest, his face crumpling a little. Steve flattened a hand on the baby's side and spoke softly. "Shh, you're safe now, it's okay."

Sam twitched the shield a half-inch closer, and the baby settled down again. He cuddled in with his cheek against Sam's arm and closed his eyes.

"Okay," Sam said, "I think we got him."

"Yeah," Steve said, but he didn't move away. His hand rested on Sam's shoulder for a moment, finding a place to touch around Sam's wings. Sam couldn't resist leaning into the contact.

A secondary explosion popped off a hundred yards away, and they both jumped. The baby, thankfully, stayed limp and silent in Sam's arms.

Sam took a step away from Steve, aiming himself west, and Steve stayed exactly at his side as they headed downhill through the trees. Sam looked sideways at him as they walked. Steve's eyes flicked from the baby to the ground ahead over and over.

"You worried I'm going to drop him?" Sam asked, when the road came into sight at the bottom of the slope. 

"Worried I'm going to wake up," Steve replied, angling them south. "I really... This never crossed my mind. I was ready for Bucky hurt, in trouble--"

Steve cut off and laughed a little; it took Sam a second, but then he caught it.

"That's what you used to call it, right? Girl got pregnant, she was in trouble?"

Steve nodded and looked over at the baby again. "Bucky used to say I found more ways to get into trouble than he ever knew there were, but I think he takes the cake here."

Sam smiled a second, then glanced up the hill toward the orange glow against the sky. "You see anybody in there at all? The building I was in looked deserted." 

Steve shook his head. "Not a soul. He was alone down there, place was emptied out. They left him. All his toys, everything, they just... _left_ him."

Which meant if he and Steve had been five minutes later, this baby would have gone up with the rest.

"Whoever sent that email," Sam said slowly. "They're the only one who knows there's even a chance he got out alive. Everyone else is gonna think he's dead. Hell, vaporized."

Steve nodded. "And he's just like Nick with Insight--safest if they keep believing they got rid of him. However sure we are that nobody who works with the Avengers could possibly be turned by HYDRA..."

Sam hugged the baby tighter instinctively. "Not sure enough?"

"Not tonight," Steve agreed wearily. "I've been working out for months who I might be able to trust with Bucky, depending on how we find him, what his condition is, what turns up in the data dump. Bucky's kid, who's been through God knows what kind of experimentation... I don't know where to start."

"Start right here," Sam said firmly. "He's safe with you, he's safe with me. We can cover tonight, get some sleep, figure the rest out in the morning."

Steve smiled slightly and bumped his shoulder against Sam's in silent agreement. Steve's eyes went back and forth, back and forth, from the baby in Sam's arms to the road ahead.

"Okay," Sam said, when they were nearly at the road, with maybe another half mile to walk to the truck. "I officially can't feel my arms anymore, so either you're taking the wing pack or you're taking the baby."

"He's probably asleep by now," Steve said hastily, like he'd been holding back exactly those words for a while now. Sam snorted and handed the shield over first. The baby didn't stir, limp as a sack of warm, breathing potatoes as Steve scooped him up. 

Sam helped him get the blanket wrapped around the baby properly. Steve made a little indecisive motion like he was going to sling the shield on his back, but he settled it on his left arm to cover the baby again.

Sam swung his arms as he walked, feeling practically weightless now that he only had the burden of his wings. With the baby's actual weight off his hands, Sam was free to worry about every damn other problem the baby presented. He couldn't even think about the future beyond tonight--conspiracies, secrets, the whole problem of _Steve raising a kid_ , let alone that it was Bucky's kid--but tonight was problem enough. 

They didn't have a car seat, diapers, anything to feed a kid or anything for him to wear once he inevitably dirtied himself in some way. Sam had spent enough time with his nieces and nephew to know that there was a countdown ticking on that already; his sister didn't leave the house without a field pack's worth of gear until a kid was potty trained, and this one wasn't nearly old enough for that.

Sam pulled out his phone, but he had no data signal, so mapping their route to the nearest all-night grocery store was going to have to wait until they got a little closer to civilization. He looked over at Steve, who was frowning intently down at the baby. Sam tried to picture the total upending of his life Steve was facing right now and then thought better of trying to guess that from the outside.

"What are you thinking, man?"

Steve looked over, his frown easing in the way that it usually did when Sam coaxed him even a little way out of his own head.

"He needs a name."

"Doesn't he--" But no, of course he didn't. Steve had introduced him as _Baby Barnes_ , and Steve hadn't seen anyone down there. There was no one to tell him what the kid was called, if Hydra had even bothered to give him a name. 

"Are you even sure he's a boy?" Sam asked.

Steve looked down sharply, startled, like if the baby was a girl she was concealing it on purpose to trick him. 

"He's wearing blue?" Steve said after a pause.

"We'll know when he or she needs a diaper change," Sam concluded. They weren't going to stop on the side of the road to check, and there was no need to go waking the poor kid up again just to see what pronoun they should be using.

"What about you?" Steve asked.

Sam shot him a smile and said, "Definitely a boy, I was pretty sure you knew that."

Steve smiled back for a second, giving Sam a quick sweeping look that made Sam's heart beat a little faster. 

"I did know that," Steve said dryly. "I meant, what are you thinking? I'm worrying about what to name him--or her. What about you?"

"Oh," Sam said. "You know, the basics. Diapers. A car seat."

"Car seat?" Steve echoed, sounding bewildered. 

Sam opened his mouth to make a joke--but no, why would Steve have any cause to know about car seat laws? Why would anyone think to catch him up on that? 

"You know the laws about seatbelts, right?"

"Yeah, it was in the little booklet I had to read to get my driver's license," Steve said. "Uh... everybody's gotta wear one, is what I remember. There were a lot of gruesome accident photos."

He looked down dubiously at the baby, like it was occurring to him that the seatbelts in the truck weren't exactly sized for an infant.

"Right, so the law in most places is kids under a certain age or size have to have a special seat that locks in place in the car. Five point restraint, extra padding, more protection in a crash. For little babies they even want them rear-facing, that's safer in a head-on collision. Driving around with a baby on somebody's lap is going to get us pulled over if a cop sees, and then...."

And then questions about where the baby came from and who he belonged to. Who his parents were and what his--or her--name was.

"Oh," Steve said, like that whole cascade was occurring to him too. 

"We can probably get to a motel, no one's that likely to notice tonight," Sam said. "Find some all-night store and get diapers and milk and baby food, and in the morning one of us can go find a big box store and get a car seat, and then we can take him wherever we need to go."

Steve nodded and then said, sounding a little grim, "So then we just have to decide where that is."

Sam nodded. For now it was simple, at least. All they had to do was follow the road back to the truck.

* * *

The baby lay curled in Steve's lap, with the shield propped over him, for the forty minutes it took Sam to find them a motel at a safe distance from Camp Atterbury. The baby had woken up and cried a little when they got to the truck, but the shield still worked to calm him down. Steve heard him pat his hand a couple of times against the underside of it and then he went still, snuggled down with his cheek on Steve's thigh. His weight and warmth were comforting, in a basic physical way. It was like having a dog or cat curled up against him, as long as Steve didn't let himself think about how they'd gotten here or what was going to happen next.

Sam seemed to understand that, because he launched into an entirely uninvited--though unspeakably welcome--explanation of the plot of a TV show called _Family Matters_ and its relationship to that _Die Hard_ movie Steve hadn't gotten around to watching yet. Steve only had to listen to Sam's voice, weaving back and forth between descriptions of mundane family dramas and death-defying heroics. 

Steve chuckled at Sam's impressions of the various characters and didn't let himself draw any mental parallels at all, or guess what had made Sam think of it. Sam kept talking right up to the moment he parked the truck and got out to go rent a room--"You stay here, I'll tell you about the whole Stefan Urquelle thing later, you'll like that"--and then Steve was abruptly alone with the baby. 

Sam had parked well down the row, away from the office and its spill of yellow light, but the parking lot was well enough lit for Steve's eyes. He didn't have any trouble seeing when he tilted the shield up to peek down at the baby again. He angled the shield to keep blocking most of the light from falling on the baby's face, and he hesitantly touched the soft curve of the baby's cheek.

The baby felt warm--he was flushed pink--but Steve thought that might just be from the shield trapping body heat, or maybe from all the excitement. He hadn't been hurt, and he probably wasn't running a fever.

"You've got that going for you," Steve said, brushing his finger gently back and forth against the baby's cheek. "Bucky probably gave you a nice strong immune system. We already know you've got good lungs."

And please God, let it only be Bucky's genes making the baby healthy. They couldn't have tried to administer the serum, or anything like it, to a baby, could they? The file Natasha had gotten for him had had a lot of gaps when it came to exactly what Zola had done to enhance Bucky, but if the process was anything like what Steve had been through, or the crude efforts that had left Bucky dazed and staggering in that factory....

They couldn't have done anything like that to a baby, Steve told himself. They might not even have had to; after Steve woke up in the 21st century they had told him that Project Rebirth altered his DNA. Zola's version had probably altered Bucky's; this child would have inherited Bucky's changes. That must have been the point of making him, after all.

Which meant Steve only had to try not to think about what they'd done to Bucky to make this baby. Steve couldn't help picturing it, obscene as it was when he was sitting here with the baby who had resulted from it. 

He wondered if they'd used some modern, clinical method, making Bucky produce a sample for them. That was better than if they'd gone for something old fashioned--had the baby's mother been willing, or had they forced Bucky, and then Bucky's child, on her? Bucky who had three baby sisters and had muttered dire threats against any man who would hurt them, Bucky who was always gentle and courteous with his own dates and would never have pushed a woman to do anything she didn't want. Bucky who had been so sweetly careful with Steve, when they finally got the courage to try anything together.

It was worse, in a way, than knowing they'd made Bucky kill for them; killing was a soldier's work, and Bucky had been a soldier, a sniper. If his CO chose the wrong targets for him, still, killing was something Bucky had already made his peace with. But if they'd made Bucky _rape_ for them--made him hurt the mother of his child that way....

Steve was startled out of his mired thoughts by Sam tapping against the window beside him. Sam gave him a worried look--he shouldn't have been able to surprise Steve like that--and Steve busied himself with unfastening his seatbelt and gathering the baby into his arms while Sam opened the door. Steve wasn't going to try to explain that no one else could have gotten so close without Steve coming to alert; Steve had already mentally categorized Sam as safe a long time ago. 

"So tell me about this Stefan," Steve said, covering the baby with his shield and letting Sam lead them to the last door on the row.

"You know I think the character might be kinda named after you?" Sam said, with no pause at all, and Steve knew he was being let off the hook. "Because you got like, four or five seasons of this weedy, nerdy Steve kid, and then along comes the _cool juice_ , and now he's Stefan, totally smooth."

"Yeah?" Steve said, angling the shield to follow Sam in through the door. "I wish it worked like that. I had to figure out how to talk to people on my own after they did the rest."

"Well, TV takes some liberties," Sam agreed, stepping aside to clear Steve's path after a brief glance around the room. "Look, I'm gonna go do a supply run, okay? You stay here with the baby, maybe wash your face."

"Yeah," Steve agreed. He bit back the instinctive urge to ask Sam to stay a while, or to let him go to the store instead. Sam had been seen renting the room; it would make sense for Sam also to be seen going to the store. And if Sam was telling him to wash his face, Steve was probably in no condition to be seen by civilians; for that matter he was still in uniform, and even with Sam an official Avenger now, Captain America was still a hell of a lot more likely to be recognized than Falcon.

Begging not to be left alone with the baby would be ridiculous. The baby was Steve's responsibility, not Sam's.

Steve nodded to Sam, who hesitated a moment and then reached across baby and shield to squeeze Steve's shoulder. "I won't be long." 

Sam turned away, then stopped and turned back. "Hey, how much do you think he weighs?"

"Uh," Steve looked down at the baby, thrown by the question. He flexed his left arm, grabbing the shield with his right hand to remove its weight. "Not quite thirty pounds, but within a pound or two of that, I think."

"Got it," Sam said, and stepped back out of the room, shutting the door firmly behind him. 

Steve looked around for somewhere to put the baby. He couldn't just lay him down and set the shield on top of him, but the shield was the only thing the kid seemed to be comforted by. Steve set the shield facedown squarely in the middle of one of the beds and laid the baby inside the shallow curve. 

The shield slid a few inches, settling into the lowest sag of the mattress. The baby seemed comfortable enough. He snuggled into the curve between the shield's grips, rubbing his cheek against the metal. He sighed something that sounded like _ee-oo_ before he went still again.

Steve grabbed the pillows from the bed and jammed them under two sides of the shield to hold it in place, and the baby stayed asleep, wrapped in his blanket and cradled in Steve's shield. Steve edged away, his eyes on the baby, until he had to turn to go into the bathroom.

_Maybe wash your face_ turned out to mean he had a dried trickle of blood from his forehead to his jaw, a drying red smear across his brow, and dirt everywhere. His hair was sticking up except for a few spots where it was flattened; Steve realized he'd pulled off his helmet to keep from scaring the baby and _then_ gotten tumbled by the explosion. He'd have to get a new helmet from supply when they went home.

When it was safe to go home. When he was sure that not even some clerk down in supply might tell someone about Bucky's baby.

He washed his face with the little paper-wrapped bar of soap by the sink and a thin, scratchy washcloth that smelled reassuringly bleached-clean, keeping an ear out all the time for any sound from the baby waking, or Sam returning. He peeled down the top half of his uniform when his face was clean, stripped out of his undershirt and washed up. 

Steve turned the water off and stood in the bathroom doorway, watching the baby sleep. Someone had risked being found out by a surviving Hydra cell to give him a chance to be rescued in time. Bucky had suffered whatever indignities and invasions had been required to make him, and likely the baby's mother had suffered more. 

Steve had shed a few unnoticed drops of blood and gotten his face dirtied, and he still felt like he was staring down the barrel of one of those old Hydra guns from his days with the Commandos--the kind that flashed blue light and made their target just disappear as if he'd never been. Steve had commanded men, but he'd never been responsible for anyone like this--never someone helpless, never someone who would rely on him utterly. 

He'd had a glimpse of that possibility when he realized Bucky didn't remember him, or even his own name. In the months they'd been searching, he'd entertained the fantasy that Bucky was out there lost somewhere, unfindable because he still didn't know who he was or where he belonged. Steve had thought of Peggy's increasing disorientation and thought, _I will help you, I will save you_.

"Careful what you wish for," Steve said aloud, shaking his head at himself. The baby wasn't Bucky, but taking care of him was something Steve could and must do for Bucky. It was just... not the task he'd been expecting, and not one he knew how to do.

He hadn't known how to be a stage performer, either. He'd gotten pretty good at that as he went along. He smiled a little, looking at his shield cradling the baby, and pictured writing himself notes on the inside. How to change a diaper, how to--do whatever else the baby was going to need Steve to do. Fix bottles? Sing lullabies? 

Suddenly the only song he could call to mind was the filthy version of "Star-Spangled Man" the Commandos had been singing the last night they were all together. Bucky never made up new verses, but he would sing along when the others did, and he had a nasty habit of humming the familiar tune under his breath when he wanted to distract Steve.

Steve smiled, remembering, and went to sit on the empty bed, opposite the sleeping baby. He hummed a few bars, safely wordless. The baby didn't stir.

* * *

Sam returned to the motel toting a Styrofoam cooler already full of ice with a jug of whole milk inside. The rest of the supplies were in plastic bags dangling from his hand. He stopped himself just short of knocking on the door for Steve to let him in, realizing it might wake the baby.

In the pause while he stood there he heard Steve's voice. Sam couldn't make out the words, but he recognized the tone. That was Steve making conversation; that was Steve trying to make _friends_. 

Sam let his forehead thump gently against the door, and Steve's voice cut off sharply. Sam winced--Steve's hearing was as enhanced as the rest of him--but he said quietly, "Steve? It's me, could you--"

Sam took a half step back at the sound of the locks turning. 

Steve was bare-chested, with the top half of his uniform peeled down like a surfer's wetsuit. He gave Sam an only slightly strung out smile and said, "Let me take that."

Sam handed over the cooler and followed him inside when he turned away to set it down, letting himself watch the flex of Steve's half naked body before he dragged his gaze away. 

The baby was asleep in Steve's shield, squarely in the middle of one of the beds, and Sam said, "So I guess we're sharing?"

Steve straightened up with a startled look, his gaze going from one bed to the other back to Sam. He opened his mouth to offer either to put the baby on the floor or to say something about what it did or didn't mean if they shared. Sam just shook his head. 

"No, man, we're sharing. We both need some shuteye, that's all. I'm gonna take a shower."

Steve shut his mouth and gave a slightly sheepish nod, and Sam nodded back and ducked past him to the bathroom. He managed to make himself slow down enough in the shower to take five minutes instead of three and didn't think about sleeping in the same bed with Steve when they had a baby sleeping in the same room. 

This was not the long overdue post-mission hookup, and it was definitely no time to think about what a few months of post-mission hookups might mean in the face of everything that had happened tonight. Neither he nor Steve had had a full night's sleep in days. It was just a motel bed and somebody else's kid. 

Sam turned off the shower, and before he could reach for a towel there was a knock at the bathroom door and Steve said, "I got your bag from the truck."

The door opened just enough for Steve to reach through and drop Sam's duffle inside, then closed again. Sam stayed in the shower for a minute, congratulating his subconscious on nearly succeeding in putting him in a mostly-plausible position to go out to Steve in a skimpy motel towel. Then he shook his head and shoved the curtain back. 

Steve was already in bed when Sam stepped out of the bathroom, decent in a clean t-shirt and boxers. Steve had chosen the side closer to the other bed and therefore to the baby, which was going to put Sam between him and the door. 

He was lying on his side, staring at the baby, and Sam paused for a second, studying the look on his face. Sam didn't think he'd seen it before, and he didn't know quite what to make of it. He checked the locks on the door and then crawled in next to Steve, settling on his back. Steve reached over and turned the lamp off, and then settled back in exactly the same position. 

Sam fell asleep still waiting for Steve to relax, or speak.


	3. Chapter 3

He smelled smoke long before his destination came into sight.

He didn't know what the place was, just that there was something important there. Something unfinished. A mission yet to be completed.

His memories were returning in fragments, but none of them told him what the mission might be, or how it had come to be his. He knew where; that was all. In the absence of any other direction, he had come to the place where the mission was. 

He had come _back_ to it, he was sure, as he circled through the trees and breathed in the smell of the smoke. It was no mere structure fire; he could smell the chemical stink of accelerant, the angry tang of hot metal. This had been a comprehensive destruction.

His heart beat faster, and a bitter taste collected at the back of his throat. Not the clean exhilaration of a threat or a fight. This felt like mission failure--but all his missions were killings, and if everything at the target site had been destroyed, surely the mission had been completed, even if not by him. 

The thought did not make his heart slow from its racing.

He came to the edge of the trees and stopped, staring. There were no buildings. There was only a field of ruin, still smoking in a few places. Makeshift barricades of orange plastic fencing had been erected to keep the curious out, and a cursory guard--four men, easily tallied because they were not maintaining proper dispersion--had been set. 

In the pre-dawn dark, it was easy to scale the permanent fence and make his way into the rubble, still homing in on the site that tugged at him without any memory to tell him why. He made his way to the southern end of the destruction. Down. It was--had been--a basement. 

He struggled to remember what it had looked like, when he had been there, _why_ , but nothing came back. Only the certainty that there had been something important here. Something he had to do and had not done. Could never do, now.

He slipped down into the collapsed ruin, navigating through still-hot structural steel and the burned remnants of walls and floors. His left hand was sufficient to move anything he had to move to clear a path. He was quiet and careful, and the guards above were at the far end of the field.

He was very near to the exact place when he saw the curve of something--a skull, he thought, for a moment, blackened and charred. 

He doubled over against the urge to vomit. _Mission failure. Mission failure. Unacceptable. Termination imminent._

He made himself move when he heard the guards coming closer, crouching down next to the curve. He realized first that it was adult-sized, and before he could wonder why he hadn't assumed that in the first place, he realized that despite its distinctive cranial shape, it wasn't a skull. The material wasn't bone but a rigid helmet. He picked it up, and rubbed away ash with the sleeve of his shirt.

A dirty but distinctive white A was revealed on a field of darkness that he knew, when the sun came up, would be blue. 

A helmet. 

_Steve's_ helmet. 

Several fragments of memory clicked into place at once. There had been a man--a mission. _Steve_. He had taken his helmet off to let-- _James Buchanan Barnes_ \-- _Bucky_ \--see his face.

Bucky. 

_My friend_.

_Cap_.

Bucky turned the helmet in his hands, examining the inner surface. It was as evenly blackened as the outside. Steve had taken the helmet off; it had been empty when the fire reached it.

Bucky looked up and around. _Steve_. _Captain America_. 

_Three cheers--_

Steve was important. If Steve had died here, people would know. There wouldn't be a handful of lackadaisical guards. There would be helicopters and reporters and--

Bucky shook his head sharply. Steve couldn't have died here, but Steve had been here. And he'd taken his helmet off. He'd come to the exact place where Bucky's mission was. Whatever he found, he'd taken his helmet off to show his face, and left his helmet behind before he escaped.

Whatever Bucky was supposed to find here, whatever he was supposed to do--Steve had found it first. 

The racing of his heart eased at that thought, so he repeated it to himself as he made his way out of the rubble, over the fence and back into the shelter of the trees.

Steve had taken the mission. Steve would handle it.

Bucky kept the helmet tucked under his arm as proof. Steve had been there, but Steve had gotten out. Steve had taken care of whatever it was. Steve wouldn't fail.

But he still couldn't remember how he knew any of that.


	4. Chapter 4

Sam woke up out of a hazy pleasant dream--lazy morning making out with Steve--to find that his brain wasn't being especially creative. He was all tangled up with Steve, they were both hard, and Steve had bright pink cheeks and a slightly pained expression.

"Hey," Sam said, smiling slowly. "I don't mind if you start without me as long as you wake me up for the good parts."

"I really didn't mean to start anything," Steve said, low like it was still the middle of the night, but he didn't move away. Steve's leg was thrown over his, and Steve's dick was pressing enthusiastically against his hip. They didn't usually wake up together, but Sam was glad they had, except that Steve was holding carefully still, looking weirdly uncomfortable, and...

"Steve?" Sam asked, because obviously _something_ wasn't okay, and he had no idea what.

Steve closed his eyes and said in a slightly strangled voice, "Maybe... not in front of the baby."

_Baby_. Right. Jesus. The vague sense of something he had to do snapped into focus as Sam remembered what they'd been doing last night and why they were in the same bed. 

Sam pushed up on his elbow, looking over Steve's shoulder. He froze. The baby wasn't just on the next bed. He was awake, sitting up in Steve's shield and staring back at Sam. 

"Hello there," Sam said, smiling a little, even as his own face went as hot as Steve's looked. 

Steve made a little despairing sound and huddled down into the pillow.

The baby swayed experimentally and then tipped forward. He grabbed at the edge of the shield, shifting his weight to one edge of it. An edge with no pillow propping it up.

"Oh, shi--" Sam tried to lunge across Steve, but Steve moved faster, rolling away from Sam and hitting his knees on the floor. Steve caught the baby with one hand and the tipping shield with the other. 

For a second everything was still. The baby was propped against Steve's right shoulder, staring wide-eyed and open-mouthed at Sam, and Steve was holding the shield up with his left hand. Crisis averted.

Then the baby finished inhaling and screamed, his face crumpling and washing red in an angry flush. 

Steve dropped the shield on the bed and put both arms around the baby, but the little guy didn't really fight like he had the night before. He wailed for a few seconds and then twisted in Steve's grip, reaching with both hands toward the bed. Toward the shield. 

His sobs settled into something that sounded like it might be a word, or a try at one. _Ee-oo, ee-oo._

"Shiiiiii-eld," Steve offered, breaking it into two syllables that almost matched what the baby was crying out. Steve pulled the shield down and propped it face-out against the bed. "Here, pal, here it is."

The baby flung himself at it, and Steve held on one-armed just enough to keep him from actually smacking into it face first. After a second Steve let go and the baby stayed there on his own feet, leaning against the front of the shield, resting his cheek against the stripes and smacking at it with his right hand. 

His crying eased up a little and the almost-word got closer to being intelligible. "Wee-oo. Wee-oo."

"Wee-oo, huh," Steve repeated, running one huge hand over the baby's brown hair. The kid allowed that, settling his weight against the shield. 

Steve's hand slid down his hand to his diaper-padded butt. 

He looked over at Sam. "So he's gonna freak out again if I try to take him away from that to change his diaper, isn't he."

Sam nodded. "Guaranteed."

Steve nodded back, frowning and running his hand cautiously over the baby's head again as he looked from the baby to the package of diapers and box of wipes sitting on the edge of the TV stand. 

"No," Sam said, rolling to his feet. He was briefly distracted by the sensation of morning wood and needing to pee, but--priorities. Baby needed to be looked after first. "You can't change him while he's standing up, so just make it quick. Get him and the shield both laid down somewhere flat. Let's do this."

"Here we go, pal." Steve grabbed the baby around the middle and the shield by one edge. He swooped them both up into the air and thumped them down on the bed. 

The baby actually giggled, smacking at the edge of the shield cheerfully. Sam was at the right angle to see the startled look of delight on Steve's face--and then Steve looked up at Sam, proud of himself and wanting to share.

Sam couldn't help grinning back. It was only when Steve looked back down at the baby, still smiling, that Sam thought, _There's something that makes you happy_.

It had become a reflex ever since Project Insight to make a mental note when he saw that something made Steve genuinely happy. Sam hadn't failed to notice that he himself did a pretty good job of it--or at least, Steve liked sex and his job and liked doing both of those things with Sam--but it was rarely as easy as that grin of accomplishment at the baby. Except that Steve had immediately turned that grin on Sam; his first instinct had been to check whether Sam had seen what he did.

Sam turned away, not letting himself think too much about just how fast the terrain was changing under his feet. He grabbed the diaper changing supplies to bring them over to Steve. When Sam turned back, Steve was already unzipping the baby's dark blue footie pajamas while the baby ignored him, interested only in running his hand over the curve of the shield. 

"Wee-oo," the baby announced as Sam set the wipes down and tore the package of diapers open to extract one.

"Wee-oo," Steve agreed, and caught the baby's patting hand to work it out of his sleeve with quick, deft hands before he let go again. 

The baby smacked at the shield more emphatically when Steve let him go, but didn't fight while Steve got him out of his jammies. That left him in a diaper that had cartoon characters Sam didn't recognize all over the front--it hadn't leaked, which Sam knew meant they were luckier than they had any right to be, but it was puffed out with its contents. Judging by the way Steve was only breathing through his mouth now, Steve could already smell it.

"So," Sam said. "Ever changed a diaper before?"

"Oddly enough I haven't," Steve said. "I offered sometimes when Bucky's youngest sister was a baby, but nobody trusted me or Bucky with pins and wiggly infants for some reason."

"Ah," Sam said. "Well, this is mostly easier. No pins. The main thing with boys is not to let them pee all over you."

Steve gave Sam a wry, sideways smile. "If he is a boy."

Sam smiled back. "If he is a boy."

"Let's find out," Steve said, and tentatively peeled back one of the tapes holding the baby's diaper shut. He ripped the second one back more quickly, and folded down the front of the diaper. Sam made a face at the mess--and smell--revealed, and the baby squirmed and made an irritated noise, not quite crying.

"Boy," Steve observed, sounding like he was trying not to breathe.

He caught the baby's ankles and tugged his butt up off the dirty diaper. Sam put the clean one in Steve's free hand and yanked the dirty one out of the way, far enough that the baby couldn't reach it. He got the wipes open and started cleaning the kid up while Steve held him mostly still. 

Sam was nearly done--and there was a mountain of wipes piled on the dirty diaper--by the time the baby started really crying.

Steve said, "Hey, now, hang in there, you're all right," and then started humming something that made the kid stop crying and stare at him.

It took Sam a second to recognize "Star-Spangled Man," and he cracked up when he did. 

Steve grinned and shook out the clean diaper, sliding it into place under the kid while Sam gave him one last swipe. When Sam turned to bundling up the biohazards, Steve fastened the new diaper in place. This one had baby Muppets on it. 

The baby kicked his feet all over the place to celebrate having his legs free, and rolled over to push up onto all fours, climbing up onto the shield. Sam tossed the dirty diaper into the nearest trash can, where it landed with a thud, and the baby looked sharply toward the sound, nearly falling over on the curve of the shield.

"Hey," Steve said, sitting down on the bed by the baby. Something in his tone made Sam sit down too, taking the place on the opposite side of the shield from Steve.

The baby looked back and forth between them and then sat down on his haunches, still perched on the shield.

"Hey," Steve said. "I know I got halfway through introducing us last night, but you were asleep, so--I'm your Uncle Steve."

The baby stared at him.

"And whatever those people were calling you," Steve went on, "from now on, unless your pop says different, your name is Teddy Barnes."

The baby said a couple of babbling baby-words to Steve, smacking his hand on the shield for emphasis.

Steve nodded. "That's right. I'm Uncle Steve, and you're Teddy. I'm going to take care of you until we find your pop and bring him home to you. He's not himself right now, but we're going to find him, and he's going to get better. He's going to be really excited to meet you, Teddy."

Sam was really glad Steve was looking at Teddy and not at him when he said that; it gave him a second to get his expression under control. 

Teddy turned his attention to Sam and tried out a few more babbled sounds.

"I'm Sam," Sam offered, because _Uncle Sam_ was maybe more than he should claim without actually talking to Steve about it first. "Sam. It's nice and short, bet you learn to say that before Uncle Steve, right?"

Teddy shoved one hand into his mouth and regarded Sam in total silence.

"We'll work on it." Sam stood up. "Hey, Teddy, you want some breakfast? You like Cheerios?"

Sam only had to take two steps to grab the yellow box. When he turned back Teddy knelt up on the shield and waved both arms, smiling open-mouthed. He babbled out a bunch of noises that sounded like, whatever other awful things HYDRA had done to him, they'd at least let him have Cheerios. 

Steve reached out to steady him and said, "Maybe breakfast on the floor, pal. You're gonna take a header if you keep that up."

Steve swooped Teddy and the shield both down to the floor between the beds while Sam ripped open the package of plastic bowls he'd gotten and poured some cereal into a bowl for Teddy. He turned around and crouched to set the bowl in front of Teddy, who lunged toward it only for Steve to catch him and pull him back. 

"First we say, _thank you, Sam_ ," Steve said firmly. 

Teddy looked up at Steve and then back at the Cheerios. 

"Thank you, Sam," Steve repeated. "Then we eat."

"Oh, wow," Sam said, staring. The world had tilted under his feet. Forget making Steve happy; Steve had just taken on a new job, and that meant he was in all the way. "Oh, wow, you're a dad. I mean, uncle, godfather, but--that was a total dad move."

Steve blushed and loosened his grip on Teddy enough for him to get at the Cheerios, and Sam knew enough to let the subject drop. 

He watched Teddy instead--a safe distraction. Teddy somehow didn't immediately tip the bowl of cereal over. He grabbed a chubby baby fistful of Cheerios and crammed them into his mouth, and immediately reached for more with a spit-dampened hand. 

"You think he knows how to drink from a cup?" Sam asked, watching in fascination while his own stomach started to grumble. "I got milk, but the Circle K didn't have baby bottles or sippy cups or anything."

Teddy stopped in mid-chomp to say "Mih?" with a mouthful of half-chewed Cheerios. He reached his right hand toward Sam, opening and closing it in a kind of grabby gesture, and a few sticky Cheerios dropped off as he did it. 

"Yeah," Sam said, watching that little hand. "Milk. You want some milk?"

"Mih!" Teddy repeated, and smacked his hand against his chest, rubbing a clumsy circle and leaving another damp Cheerio behind.

"Teddy," Steve said admonishingly, but Sam shook his head, waving Steve off.

"That was _please_ ," Sam said, making the same circular gesture against his own chest as he said the word. "Sign language. Somebody's already been teaching your boy to be polite."

"Sign language?" Steve repeated as Sam stood up and went into the bathroom. "He's not deaf, is he? Or were they?"

"He's not, for sure," Sam said, coming back with a plastic cup and grabbing the milk from the cooler. "He listens, and he's already pretty much talking, so they must have talked to him. Teaching babies some signs is pretty common. They can usually make some signs before they can talk so anybody can understand them. My sister's kids all did the please thing, and _more_ and _all done_."

Sam poured half an inch of milk into the bottom of the cup and held it out; Steve scooted close behind Teddy and steadied his tiny little hands on the cup, helping him tip it up far enough to drink. Sam just stared for a second and then he got up again and grabbed his phone from the charger, coming back just in time to snap pictures of Steve's hands over Teddy's as he lowered the cup to reveal Teddy's milk mustache. It was quickly dripping down into a milk fu manchu. Steve snorted and tried to wipe some of the milk away with the side of his hand, but Teddy wiggled away from him, splattering milk everywhere.

"Yeah," Sam said, snapping a few more action shots. "We'll get you a sippy cup, man, you'll be fine."

Teddy squirmed away from Steve's grip to grab himself some more Cheerios, and Sam grabbed bowls and spoons for himself and Steve and settled back down to join the party.

* * *

Steve and Sam took turns in the bathroom after their respective first bowls of cereal. Steve was already halfway through his second helping when Sam came back out--wearing jeans now, which made everything a little less distracting. He sat down again with Teddy, the shield, and Teddy's growing field of debris between them. 

Sam swept a few of Teddy's lost Cheerios into a little pile, looking pointedly away from Steve as he asked, "So is Teddy named after somebody?"

Steve smiled a little. "Bucky hated his name, you know? Used to bitch all the time about being named after a president no one cared about. We were talking about it one time in '33--fifteen, sixteen years old--and thinking up presidents it would be better to be named after than James Buchanan. I mean, practically anyone would be better, everyone would be better, but we both agreed that Roosevelt would be the tip top. Of course I meant Franklin and he meant Teddy."

"Huh," Sam was smiling cautiously back at him. "He liked the idea of the skinny kid with asthma turning into Mister Speak Softly and Carry a Big Stick, huh?"

Steve shrugged, tilting his head; he'd never thought of it quite like that. "I don't know if it's what he would've named his son, really, but--after that, when I thought about Bucky having a kid, I thought about little Teddy Barnes. I didn't...."

Sam stayed silent this time, letting Steve choose how much of it to tell. He owed Sam an explanation, though. They'd never made each other any promises, and he knew his unspoken thing with Sam wasn't what his unspoken thing with Bucky had been when they were young, but Sam was important to him. Steve needed him to understand what Teddy meant, because Steve was in this to the end of the line, wherever the hell that was when you were talking about a kid.

"I didn't think I would ever have kids of my own," Steve said, poking at his cereal with his flimsy plastic spoon. 

"Before the serum I figured I wouldn't live long enough, or wouldn't ever meet a dame who wanted to risk giving birth to Steve Rogers Junior. I didn't know if that was even something I wanted to risk myself--there were plenty of orphans needing homes, why bring another sick kid into the world?"

He chanced a look at Sam, who nodded calm understanding. Steve looked away again. 

"I asked Erskine, beforehand--if the serum worked on me, would it affect my children, too? And he said he didn't know. The animals they tested previous versions on, they all seemed to be rendered sterile by it. So I figured, fine. No children. It didn't really seem like giving anything up, and that was something to worry about after the war anyway. I figured--same thing I always expected. I'd be Bucky's kids' Uncle Steve, maybe Bucky's sisters' kids, too, if they stayed around the neighborhood when they got married. And then--" Steve waved one hand, sweeping away every future he'd ever envisioned for himself.

"When I woke up here, they ran all kinds of tests. I asked them about that, about having kids, so they ran some specific tests on that, too." 

Steve felt his cheeks heat a little, remembering the most joyless masturbation session of his entire life, filling that plastic sample cup. "And they said Erskine was right, even if he didn't have all the genetic information to know why. Chromosomal abnormalities, maybe from the serum, maybe from the radiation, so--no kids. And I figured that was it, then. Kids were just going to be something that happened to other people; I had a job to do. I _have_ a job to do."

Steve let go of his spoon and reached out to run a hand over Teddy's silky hair. Teddy twisted to look at him, and offered him a damp fistful of Cheerios. Steve leaned forward and lipped a few of them off his chubby palm, making Teddy laugh. Steve couldn't help smiling back.

"Except now you're his dad," Sam said quietly, and Steve didn't look up. Teddy kept digging through his bowl of Cheerios, and Steve just stared at the smallness of him, his tiny ears, the soft brown curls covering his skull. 

"You can call yourself Uncle Steve till you're blue in the face," Sam went on. "But you're the one who's here. You're the one who's gonna be here for him. I know you, man--doesn't matter how much you never expected this, you're not gonna let him down."

And whether it was Teddy or Bucky who Sam was talking about, it was the same truth. If they never found Bucky, or if they found him so damaged by what he'd been through that there was no place in his life for Teddy... 

Teddy picked his empty cup up and held it out to Sam, gesturing for milk again. Sam took it from him and poured another inch, looking to Steve for an answer as he held it to Teddy's mouth.

Steve nodded slowly. "I won't. But I don't know what that's going to look like, either. Even if HYDRA's not looking for Teddy, telling people he's my kid kind of..." Steve winced.

"Paints a target on his back?" Sam offered, with the kind of painful accuracy Steve ought to be used to by now. 

Steve couldn't help looking at the shield. Captain America was always supposed to be visible; he'd thought Peggy could stand that kind of limelight, and in the idle moments when he'd wondered if he and Sam might make something official someday, he figured that Sam could too. He was an Avenger, a veteran, a man with no qualms about telling reporters when they were asking a stupid question.

But Teddy was just a baby, and Bucky--

Bucky was gone. If he ever did resurface, it was his own notoriety he'd have to deal with, not his relationship with Steve. Although that brought Steve right back to why he'd never bitten the bullet and talked to Sam about just what they were doing here, and--now wasn't a good time for that either. He had to work out what to do with Teddy first.

"Bucky and I," Steve started, and was interrupted by the Dance of the Sugarplum Fairies tinkling out of his phone. Natasha had changed his ringtone again while they were in Antarctica, apparently.

Teddy turned toward the sound, looking interested and swaying like he wanted to dance. Steve let the ringtone loop a couple of times, mesmerized, before he finally remembered to pick up the call. He hit the speaker button, because he had a feeling Sam would need to hear this too. Natasha never sounded angry or upset even when she was, so it wasn't likely that she would scare Teddy. 

"So I had a few interesting conversations this morning, much earlier than I wanted to be awake," Natasha said. 

Steve winced and checked the time; it was still earlier than Natasha probably wanted to be awake, coming off a mission like they'd just had.

"The first one was with a quinjet pilot who was very worried that he'd accidentally failed to use the appropriate secrecy protocols in transporting you for a covert mission," she went on.

Teddy turned away from the phone, losing all interest now that the music had been replaced by an unfamiliar voice. He picked up a handful of Cheerios and offered them to Sam, and Sam tugged Teddy into his lap so that he could reach to cram them directly into Sam's mouth. Steve's heart squeezed, painfully tender, at the sight of the two of them together, accepting each other without question.

"And it took some doing, but I got him to explain why he thought you were on a covert mission and not just sneaking off for some uninterrupted alone time with Wilson--" Steve glanced at Sam, who tilted his head and smirked a little, and, yeah, Steve hadn't really thought they were hiding anything from Natasha.

"--Which is when he explained to me that your tracker data showed you were in the immediate vicinity of a massive explosion at a National Guard base in Indiana last night. And that's so weird, because I'm pretty sure that's the kind of thing you would tell me about if you'd been involved, what with us running this team together."

Steve winced. He hadn't thought about the trackers, let alone briefing Natasha. 

"It wasn't an Avengers matter," Steve said.

"Also we didn't actually blow anything up," Sam added, cuddling Teddy against his shoulder as he leaned in. "We just showed up and five minutes later it blew up all by itself."

Natasha's silence was palpably skeptical.

"It was just--a thread I was pulling," Steve said quietly, looking at Teddy in Sam's arms. He squirmed and Sam let him down; he immediately crawled past Sam to explore, pulling himself up to the edge of one of the beds and peering around.

"And you didn't come home after it blew up in your face because..."

Steve sighed, and let himself sound exactly as exhausted as he felt. "Because it blew up in my face, Nat, and I couldn't face anyone who didn't know what I was after there. If he..."

It worked. Natasha's voice was gentler as she said, "He wasn't there, Rogers. Not when it went up."

Steve closed his eyes and didn't try to untangle the combination of relief and disappointment he felt. "How would you know that?"

"The Indiana National Guard is one of the agencies that took Stark up on that donation of disaster-response bot packages. They deployed the ones housed at Camp Atterbury within about five minutes of the explosions starting. By the time they got the fires out they'd already scanned all the buildings affected--no survivors, no human remains. And those things also scan for the presence of vibranium and signs of tesseract energy. There was nothing. If he was there, he got away clean. Unlike you."

Steve frowned and looked up at Sam--and up, because Sam was on his feet, hands on his hips, watching Teddy explore past the foot of the bed. Sam looked down at Steve and tapped the top of his head at the same time Natasha said, "You lost another helmet, Cap. That's where one of your trackers is, so we know it was in the building at the time of the explosion. The National Guard bots don't pick up Avengers' trackers unless the screamer circuit is activated. Yours wasn't, but it shows up in your tracker data."

"You already knew," Steve started, but Natasha overrode him.

"What also showed up was your helmet on the move--about two hours ago, before dawn. The main wreckage hasn't even begun to be cleared, but somebody pulled your helmet out of the middle of it and took it away. Signal cut off completely about three miles from Camp Atterbury, which means the tracker was destroyed, with or without the rest of the helmet, or it was taken behind enough shielding to block the signal."

Steve opened and closed his mouth, trying to think of a sane question to ask while wildly irrational hope bloomed in his chest. Who else could have gotten into the wreckage without anyone noticing except by the tracker signal? Who would have taken the helmet and not alerted anyone, and then slipped away to hide? If Bucky had some safehouse near here...

"Nat, can you get me access to that tracking data? And, uh, make sure no one else has access to it?"

"I locked your and Wilson's trackers to Avengers only as soon as soon as your pilot started talking about a covert mission. It'll take me a minute to get you remote access and push an app--it might be quicker if I just came out there with a secure computer."

Steve looked over at Teddy. He trusted Natasha; he knew she would never hurt Teddy, or let anyone else hurt him. She'd kept the secret of Clint's kids even from her own team, after all. And she probably knew better than anyone else on the team what it meant to grow up in a place like the one where they'd been keeping Teddy.

All of which was going to make it really complicated to introduce her to Teddy when Steve was still trying to figure out what on earth to _do_ with him. He didn't have a secret farm to stash Teddy away on--even if he bought one, it wouldn't come with a mother and older siblings to look after Teddy and give him a family. 

"Just push the app when you can," Steve said finally, only looking up at Sam as he made the call. 

Sam gave him an understanding nod, which was very kind of him, because Steve wasn't sure he understood himself what he was doing here.

"On it," Natasha said. "And don't forget to give Sam a big sloppy... _kiss_ for following you around on this, Rogers. He should be enjoying a day off like a normal person right now."

"I get bored when I act like a normal person," Sam said, bending over to speak toward the phone. "It's why I get along so well with Steve."

"You two deserve each other," Natasha said, more or less fondly, and hung up. 

Steve hung up and looked up at Sam. "I, uh--I do owe you... a lot."

Sam smiled, which took the sting out of it when he said, "Yeah, you do." 

He folded down to crouch in front of Steve, and kissed him softly. It was just that, just a kiss, nothing they shouldn't do with Teddy in the room, but it still made Steve want to shake and clutch at Sam--or maybe that was just what he wanted all the time. Sam pulled back without deepening the kiss and added, "I'll let you know when I want to cash that in."

Steve nodded, trying to work out what that might mean, and when, and what he needed to do next--with Sam, with Teddy, with _Bucky_ , who was here somewhere, and maybe could be found after all. What did that mean for Teddy? What did it mean for Steve, for whatever he had with Sam?

"Go take a shower, man," Sam said quietly, jerking him out of his thoughts and giving his shoulder a squeeze. "We'll find a mall, we'll get Teddy a car seat, we'll figure out what to do next. It's okay if you don't know yet. This isn't the kind of thing anybody has a contingency plan for. Give yourself an hour to live with it before you have to have it all figured out."

Steve nodded mutely and kissed Sam again. When he stood up he found that Teddy was at the foot of the bed, clinging to the edge and staring across it at them. Steve scooped him up and kissed his Bucky-brown hair before he headed to the bathroom.


	5. Chapter 5

Sam put the last of the milk away in the cooler and cleaned up all the stray Cheerios he could find, and by the time he'd finished with that Teddy had crawled back over to where he was. When Sam gave him a clear path he sat down next to the shield and leaned against it, his cheek against the white star and one hand stroking along the outer curve. 

Sam reached out and smoothed his hand over Teddy's hair. Teddy blinked at him and decided to allow it, snuggling up against the shield and not pulling away from Sam.

"So this is happening," Sam said softly. He'd been doing pretty well at taking his own advice right up until he said it out loud to Steve, but he couldn't help trying to work it out himself now. 

Being in a let's-pretend-this-is-casual-until-you're-ready-to-talk-about-it relationship with Steve had seemed like a reasonable strategy until now. Sam knew Steve well enough to know that he was almost physically incapable of imagining the future beyond the next mission, or the _find Bucky_ event horizon. It meant that no one else whose future relied on Steve could plan further than that either, but Sam was in no big hurry to pin things down. He liked Steve. He liked being with Steve. He trusted Steve and he knew that Steve trusted him. That was good enough for the time being.

But babies came with futures attached. If Steve was going to raise Teddy, he was going to have to think at least a little about what his future looked like eighteen or twenty years down the line--and that was going to mean thinking about whether he wanted Sam in the picture couple of decades from now, and who he wanted Sam to be to Teddy. 

And Sam had to make up his own damn mind about all of that, too.

"I don't think a _blue-eyed_ grandchild is quite what my Mama had in mind last time she pestered me about settling down and making a family," Sam said softly. "But then, I think you would still be about a hundred percent more grandchild than she's been counting on from me since I got into the Avenging business, so she probably won't mind too much. Definitely won't hold it against _you_ , which is good, because she might be your only shot at a Grandma in this century."

Teddy blinked at him again, sleepily this time. He was probably about to doze off.

Sam shook his head. Babies came with futures attached, but they also needed you to look after them _right now_. Teddy looked like he was ready for an after-breakfast nap, which made this an either ideal or totally disastrous time to try to drag him out on a shopping trip. Sam thought about going out alone again, except that he didn't want to leave Steve alone with the kid and his thoughts right now. He could send Steve out, maybe....

"Or we can suck it up and hope you sleep through it," Sam said out loud, making his voice gentle and soothing. Teddy blinked heavy eyes, waved his right arm at Sam, and then went back to petting the shield, mumbling out a _wee-oo_.

"Step one," Sam said, looking around for the baby's discarded pajamas. "Let's get you dressed. I know your Uncle Steve isn't taking you out in public in nothing but a diaper."

Teddy didn't respond at all that time, patting his hand quietly against the shield, but Sam was already getting up to grab Teddy's pajamas off the bed. They were half inside out and a flash of white caught Sam's eye--it could have been the backside of some embroidered design, but the pajamas were plain. The white was a patch of crisscrossed strips of medical tape.

"Aw, hell," Sam muttered. He glanced toward the bathroom door, considering possibilities for what someone could have taped to the inside of the kid's pajamas before they left him behind to maybe die or maybe be rescued in the nick of time. A note? His real name? A tracker?

At that thought, Sam ripped the tape free. He was already thinking, _no, they'd have found us_ and also, _no, they'd have put it in the baby_ , when he looked down and recognized the micro SD card, wrapped in plastic and stuck to the tape.

Sam raised the mess of tape and plastic close enough to his face to read the printing on the tiny card: 128 GB. That might just be one hell of a long note.

Sam looked down at Teddy. "Maybe we're gonna find out where you came from after all, huh, kid."

But Teddy had fallen asleep leaning against Steve's shield, his right hand clutching the edge.

* * *

Steve opened the bathroom door, and the sound of Teddy crying--not screaming like he had the night before, just sobbing inconsolably--hit him like a blow. 

"I know, I know, I'm the meanest," Sam was saying as he zipped up Teddy's pajamas. Teddy was lying on the bed next to the shield, and as soon as Sam finished getting him dressed and let go, Teddy rolled over and flung himself down on it.

"Somebody wants a nap," Sam said, looking up at Steve. "Which means our timing kind of sucks, unless he sleeps enough in the car to settle him down."

Sam sounded dubious about the prospect, and Steve vaguely remembered that babies' naps tended to occupy significant blocks of time. He and Bucky had nearly always needed to go play out of earshot--and occupy Becca out of earshot--when Josie and Gertie were sleeping, which had seemed to be most daylight hours. 

"I could go," Steve said hesitantly. He felt guilty at the thought of leaving Sam behind with Teddy, but he also couldn't countenance the thought of staying behind himself.

"Well," Sam said. "Thing is, I think we've got two different errands to run." 

Sam picked up something tiny off the bedside table and offered it, on the tip of his finger, to Steve. Steve took the tiny rectangle of black plastic; it had a data capacity marked on it, which meant it was some kind of drive or disk.

"Taped to the inside of his PJs," Sam said. "Looks like whoever got in touch wanted to save more than just Teddy from this project."

Steve's eyes went automatically to Teddy, asleep on top of the shield with his hand stuffed half into his mouth. If the files concerned him, and the project that had made him--this would have information about Bucky, even if only obliquely. 

It would also have information about Teddy's mother--who she was, maybe where she was. If Teddy had a mother out there somewhere who wanted him back, someone who could give him a halfway normal life...

"How do we read this?"

"We'll need a converter and some kind of computer to plug it into. Your phone might work, but it'll be safer to keep it on a device that's not networked until we know who we want to share this with. The converter's the tricky part; we'll have to go to an actual electronics store for that. But there's one in Columbus not far from a Target--I can drop you and Teddy off to get baby stuff and go get what we need to read this."

Those assignments made sense, Steve knew. Sam obviously already knew what tech they needed, and would be able to be purposeful and unobtrusive in an electronics store in a way Steve rarely managed. And Teddy would be infinitely less noticeable with Steve than with Sam in public; he would make good camouflage for Steve, who could use it. No one would expect Captain America to be holding a baby for longer than it took to snap a photo.

"Right," Steve said, not letting himself wish there were any other way to do this. "Let's go, then."

* * *

This time, to stay out of sight, Steve rode in the backseat foot well with Teddy in his lap, the shield propped at his side, ready to hand in an emergency. Steve couldn't really talk to Sam in this position, but he could see out the side window, so he watched rural Indiana go by as they cruised down the two-lane road. 

It didn't look like it had changed much from when he rode through in the USO bus--they'd done shows in Indianapolis and Louisville, so they must have passed pretty near here. That just reminded him of spotting Bucky's sister Gertie in the audience at the Indianapolis show. She'd been shipped out to Shelbyville to live with Barnes relatives when Bucky left for Basic and Becca got her factory job; they'd tried to send Josie, too, but she wouldn't go. Gertie had wound up marrying some fella from Shelbyville--she was still living out here, the last Steve knew.

He looked down at Teddy. You have an aunt, he thought, and then he wondered which of Bucky's sisters, if any of them, had ended up in possession of that picture of him from when he was Teddy's age. 

The truck came to a gentle stop and Sam called back, "This is you. Remember, if anybody asks you're replacing his old car seat."

"Got it," Steve said, and levered himself up onto the seat, kicking the shield underneath to hide it. Teddy stayed asleep, slumped against Steve's chest, while Steve got out of the car and shut the door behind him. Steve stood in front of the row of double doors and watched Sam pull away, and then turned to go inside. 

It was warm outside; he felt the temperature drop when they stepped into the building's narrow shadow, and felt it even more sharply when the automatic doors slid open and he stepped into the artificial chill of the air-conditioned store. Teddy stirred against his chest, whimpering, and Steve closed both arms around him, trying to keep him warm. He should have brought Teddy's blanket, but he'd thought the pajamas would be more than enough on a summer day.

He stepped the rest of the way into the store and stopped in the entry to acclimate to the bright lights and the bustle of people in the cavernous space.

Teddy sat up and looked around. 

Steve watched, keeping his hand firmly on Teddy's back, as Teddy took in with widening eyes the bright lights, the dizzying array of signs, the people moving all around them. Teddy turned his head to look at Steve, and Steve gave him a wry, apologetic smile. "Sorry, pal. I don't like shopping either."

Teddy grabbed hold of Steve's shirt with both hands as he looked around again, and then he let out an ear-splitting howl, not at all muffled by the way he hunched over, trying to hide his entire body in Steve's chest. Everyone in their vicinity looked toward them, probably to see what kind of torture was being inflicted on that poor child. Steve felt his face falling into his most awkward artificial smile as he curled both arms firmly around Teddy and bounced him a little. 

Everyone was going to know he had stolen Teddy yesterday; everyone was going to know that he had no right to this child and no idea what to do with him. Someone was going to take Teddy away. When Steve realized that he felt a desperate curl of hope at that possibility he knew he had to do something other than stand there and be stared at. 

There was a sign for restrooms to his left. Steve dodged that way and slipped into the men's room while Teddy shrieked against his chest. The sound echoed horribly in the smaller space, but at least there was no one in here to stare at them.

"Okay, pal," Steve said softly, bouncing Teddy a little. "Okay, hey, it's okay. It's okay. I know we're messing with your nap, but we'll get our stuff and get out of here quick, okay?"

Teddy pounded his little fists against Steve's chest and shoulder without relaxing his death grip on Steve's shirt, and it occurred to Steve that this was an improvement of sorts: last night Teddy had been fighting away from him, and now he was holding on. Even if Steve was only familiar by comparison with everyone and everything else in the world, well, at least Teddy preferred him over the available options.

Steve just had to get him to stop screaming long enough to go buy a car seat. He looked at his own helpless reflection, and Teddy's humped, flailing body. Teddy's frantic screaming was trailing into the gentler sobbing that Sam had coped with that morning, and Steve tried to be as matter of fact as Sam had in the face of it. "I know, it's awful. I know. Hey--look at that, what's over here?"

He turned Teddy a little, and Teddy picked his head up and looked. Steve was just about to try talking to Teddy about those guys in the mirror when Teddy reached abruptly over Steve's shoulder, sobbing out _wee-oo_ as he pounded the fist still clutching Steve's shirt. 

Steve turned, angling Teddy toward whatever it was as he looked. Teddy lunged nearly out of his grip to pat his right hand against the shiny chrome curve of the hand dryer's vent.

"Wee-oo," Teddy sobbed, leaning his cheek against Steve's shoulder as he patted the shiny metal surface. 

"Wee-oo, yeah," Steve said, wondering what the hell that was supposed to mean. Anything metal? Did it remind him of his crib back in the lab? Steve couldn't remember seeing anything metal in the room other than that. "Sorry we couldn't bring the shield inside, pal. We'll find you something else when we get into the store, okay?"

"Wee-oo," Teddy repeated, forlornly, but he almost wasn't crying at all now. 

"Okay," Steve said, rubbing Teddy's back, "Okay. Wee-oo."

Teddy's patting hand stilled on the hand dryer vent, and his body went limp in Steve's grip; he was asleep again. Steve stood there looking down at the hand dryer, trying to think of the shiniest curved metal thing he might be able to find in the store to comfort Teddy when he inevitably woke up again. A mirror? Maybe a bowl. He just had to find a shiny metal bowl before Teddy woke up again and they might get through this with a bare minimum of screaming.

"Okay," Steve murmured. "Mission objective identified, mission plan selected."

Steve eased away from the hand dryer. Teddy's extended hand flailed for a few seconds, then caught Steve's sleeve at the shoulder and held tight. Steve backed out of the bathroom, barely breathing.

* * *

Sam got a cart when he walked into Target--Teddy was going to need a lot more stuff than Steve could inconspicuously buy. Steve wasn't already standing out front or anywhere in sight near the registers, so Sam headed for the aisles of baby stuff and soon spotted him--there was a big cardboard-boxed baby seat in his cart, and Teddy was cuddled on his chest, asleep with one hand on a shiny metal bowl that was turned down on Steve's shoulder like a piece of medieval armor.

"Wee-oo," Steve said a little wearily, intercepting Sam's glance. "Here, I've been making a list, I figure it's going to look weird if I buy too many things at once."

Sam nodded and accepted Steve's notebook, glancing over the few other items in Steve's cart--a couple of changes of baby clothes, a copy of _The Very Hungry Caterpillar_ , and a package of men's socks.

"Yeah, that looks about right. I'll get this stuff and meet you in the parking lot."

Steve nodded and pushed off, meandering toward the food aisles instead of heading straight for the checkout. 

Sam checked the list again; SIPPY CUP was at the top. He made the quickest work he could of the rest, then hit the book aisles to add some Dr. Seuss to the collection. His hand hovered over _Hop on Pop_ for a moment before he changed targets and grabbed _One Fish, Two Fish_ to go with _The Cat in the Hat_.

Steve was already in line when Sam headed up to check out. Sam chose a lane two down from Steve's, close enough to hear Steve respond to the cashier's remark on his adorable child with, "Yeah, we think he's about done with the stomach flu now, thankfully, but he needs a new car seat first thing. Just hope I'm not back here in two days buying another one." 

Sam allowed himself an idle glance over, and saw that the cashier was now ringing Steve up while trying not to get too close to, or even look directly at, either him or Teddy. Score one for Steve's use of the kid as camouflage; nobody was going to remember that it had been Captain America who came through with the plague vector baby. 

"Here, don't forget to ring this up," Steve said, dislodging Teddy from the bowl on his shoulder, shiny with a slick of drool. Sam had to make himself look away from the cashier's expression of barely-suppressed horror.

When Sam was finished checking out, he headed out to the truck and found Steve already there. He'd stashed Teddy in the shield in the back seat and was ripping open the cardboard box holding the car seat. He found the manual and flipped it open, scanning through it with a frown, and Sam didn't say anything about how difficult this was supposed to be. If anyone could simply _install a car seat_ , it would be Steve. 

Still, Sam reached out and took the manual from him when he seemed to be finished with it, and he went around to the truck's glove compartment and pulled out the owner's manual, then started searching for instructions on his phone while Steve ripped open plastic coverings and pulled out the pieces of the car seat.

Steve seemed to have done that thing where he memorized stuff on sight, though, because the muttering he did under his breath didn't even seem to be cussing. He followed all the steps Sam could find in the manual, then gave the base of the seat an experimental tug before he turned to Sam, looking sheepish.

"Could you, uh. Check if you can move it? I don't want to break it trying."

Sam snorted, but changed places with Steve. "Hashtag supersoldier problems."

Sam gave the car seat a few tugs and shakes, but Steve had tightened and locked everything in place, and it didn't budge. Sam looked past it to Teddy, sleeping peacefully in the shield, and realized that getting the thing installed had probably actually been the easy part. 

He glanced over at Steve, who looked like he was coming to the same grim conclusion. 

"You get the feeling we're outnumbered even though there's only one of him?" Sam asked.

Steve met Sam's eyes then, cracking a smile as he ran a hand through his hair. "Well, our opponent there doesn't hold anything back. I guess that's an advantage."

Sam nodded. "Well, you got the thing in, I guess this part is my turn."

Steve opened his mouth like he was going to argue and then... didn't. "I'll get that bowl for him."

Steve turned his attention to the remaining bags, and tidying up the wreckage of the car seat's packaging, while Sam went around to the other side of the truck to get to Teddy.

"I mean," Sam said. "He'll probably wake up and cry, but he won't _explode_ , right? So..."

He took a breath and scooped Teddy up. The kid flailed with his whole body, flinging all his limbs out straight as soon as he was clear of the shield. He let out a shriek like he'd just been set down on hot coals when Sam laid him in the cradling car seat, immediately trying to climb out and screaming his siren wail for the shield. In the confined space of the truck the volume was physically painful.

"Look, look, hey, here," Steve said, lunging in from the other side to offer the shiny metal bowl. "Here, wee-oo."

Teddy snatched it out of Steve's hand, and his scream slackened without quite stopping as he clutched the edge of the bowl and looked up at it. Steve's hands darted in to join Sam's, hastily pulling the car seat's straps around him. Steve got the bottom parts and Sam pulled the over-the-shoulder straps into place as gently as he could.

It wasn't gentle enough for Teddy not to notice, though. When Sam and Steve's hands met, clicking the seatbelt parts into place, he screamed at full blast and flung the bowl over the back of the backseat. He flailed against the straps, struggling to get free, and Sam grabbed the shield and tipped it up where Teddy could see it. 

The shield only served to give Teddy a target to lunge at until they managed to get it jammed in half on top of him. There was an ominous tearing noise from the back seat upholstery, but Sam was willing to sacrifice the rental car deposit for anything that would make Teddy settle down a little. He grabbed the edge of the shield with both hands and closed his mouth on the edge too, still letting out little snuffling sobs around the metal.

Steve and Sam were both still, hands hovering over him. There were tear tracks down Teddy's cheeks and his eyelashes were wet; Sam had been in actual combat and this still might be the saddest thing he'd ever seen.

"So I don't think he's ever been in a car seat before," Steve said quietly. 

Sam nodded without taking his eyes off Teddy. 

"You think he could break a tooth on that?" Sam asked, watching Teddy mouth at a vibranium edge that he'd definitely seen kill people.

"I don't think I want to try to stop him if he's set on it," Steve said. "Maybe... maybe he'll soothe himself back to sleep on the drive back?"

Sam looked from Steve to Teddy, who was still crying in a low, miserable moan, and decided it wasn't worth bursting that bubble. "Yeah, maybe."

* * *

Steve sat in the backseat next to Teddy as Sam drove them, and their cargo of supplies, back to the motel. Teddy's crying trailed off a few times, his eyes slipping shut, only to start up again when Sam stopped for a light, or when another car passed them, or completely randomly as far as Steve could tell. 

As they neared the motel, Sam said, "I got less than a quarter tank, man, or I'd just keep driving."

Steve winced and shook his head. "Drop us off and go fill up, maybe I can get him to sleep in the shield. He'll be happier out of the car seat anyway."

Sam nodded and took the turn for the motel, and Teddy started screaming louder as soon as they slowed down. He fought when Steve pushed the shield away to get at his car seat straps, and fought when Steve tried to get the straps off of him. He nearly managed to lunge out of Steve's arms when Steve lifted him clear, even though Steve had given him the edge of the shield back and lifted it with him. 

Sam got out of the car and opened the door of the motel room for them, so Steve could hustle Teddy inside, laying him and the shield back down on a bed. As soon as he did, Teddy shoved the shield away and crawled toward an edge. When Steve caught him from going over he, of course, screamed. 

Sam set down some shopping bags by the end of the bed and gave Steve a wide-eyed look.

Steve shook his head. "Go fill up. Give your ears a chance to recover."

Sam grimaced and came over, giving Steve a quick kiss. "You're a brave man, Rogers."

Steve moved Teddy and the shield to the floor between the beds as Sam walked away. Teddy crawled after Sam, sobbing something that sounded like an incoherent attempt at words. Sam looked back at the doorway, but Steve waved him on before Teddy could catch his ankle, pushing the door shut after him.

Teddy crammed his fingers into the crack under the door and cried, and after a moment Steve lay down next to him. He pushed his own fingertips into the same crack beside Teddy's fingers--it wouldn't do to have Sam open the door and hit Teddy.

* * *

Sam returned with earplugs; by then Teddy had migrated to the bathroom floor and was lying beside the shield, patting it and whimpering quietly. Steve had unpacked the sippy cup and filled it with milk, and Teddy had taken one sip and then flung it away. Steve was sitting in the bathroom doorway with the cup in his hands, watching Teddy and wondering how the hell he was supposed to be responsible for a kid who wouldn't even let Steve pick him up.

Steve looked over when Sam walked in, and Sam came straight to him and crouched at Steve's side. He put his hands on Steve's head, making a show of tugging up Steve's eyelids as he looked at Steve's eyes. Steve could see the orange protrusion of earplugs, bright against the darkness of Sam's ears. 

"Take two of these," Sam said, "and step outside and eat a snack and then order lunch. There's a diner down the street that delivers here."

Steve closed his eyes and nodded, taking the earplugs from Sam's hand and tucking them into his ears immediately. They didn't actually block the sound of Teddy crying, but they made it sound further away, like something he was used to blocking out.

He grabbed the box of energy bars he'd picked up at Target and took two outside with him, leaning against the grill of the truck as he mechanically ate both. The sun was shining, and he actually almost couldn't hear Teddy crying; he felt his blood sugar lift while he was still eating the second energy bar, and he took a deep breath and straightened his shoulders. He could do this. With Sam's help, he could do this.


	6. Chapter 6

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Posting a day early, because I realized that I could not pass up the opportunity to post this particular chapter on Father's Day. :D

Teddy fell asleep while Steve and Sam were eating lunch, his baby grumbling dwindling into little snores that echoed off the bathroom's hard surfaces. Sam had shut the light off and tossed his blanket down next to him, and Teddy had dragged it over himself. He otherwise refused to be moved, or to eat anything, and Steve and Sam silently agreed to just leave him to sleep it off this time.

Sam set up the laptop and converter he'd bought while Steve was alone with Teddy at Target; Steve found that his phone had a new tracking app and pulled up the data for his helmet tracker.

It was on the move.

Steve clapped a hand over his mouth--he dared not wake Teddy--and ran the tracking data in ten minute jumps. The tracker had reappeared near its last known location nearly three hours ago, and it had been on the move ever since. Whoever had it had driven a ring around Camp Atterbury, staying on main roads, and now seemed to be circling out further, first south and now west.

_We're east_ , Steve thought fiercely at the map. _Come this way, we're here._

"Steve?" 

Steve looked up, thinking that Sam was going to warn him about cracking his phone in half or trying to use psychic powers he didn't have, but Sam wasn't even looking at him. He was staring at the laptop with an expression that Steve couldn't read.

"The files?" Steve scrambled up to his feet. "What is it, is it--is he--"

Sam held out a warding hand, not letting Steve come around behind him to see. He finally dragged his eyes away from the screen and said seriously, "I want you to sit down, okay? Because--" 

Sam looked back at the screen, his eyes scanning quickly over something. "Because I'm really sure that I'm reading it right, and I want you to hear it from a person, and not... this."

Steve's knees went out, and he sat on the edge of the bed, clutching his phone like some kind of talisman. Bucky had to be alive, driving around the wrong side of the county. Bucky was alive. Teddy was sleeping. It had to be all right. It had to be fixable, whatever it was.

"Is he..." Steve suddenly found his mind flooded with nightmarish science fiction storylines about clones going wrong, genetically engineered nightmares. "Is Teddy, is he--"

"He's fine." Sam shook his head quickly. "I haven't seen anything in here to suggest that he's anything but healthy, but he's--Steve, he's not just Bucky's."

Steve nodded quickly, telling himself it wasn't a bad thing, really, it would be a relief to know there was someone else out there for Teddy, someone who might be able to give him a normal life far away from Steve. "I know, he--he must have a mother, he--"

"Yeah, he does." Sam was starting to smile. "But, man, the mother is _you_."

Steve shook his head. Sam wasn't making sense, and Steve felt physically off balance. "She--what? She's--"

"No," Sam said. "Not she, Steve. You. Teddy's parents, genetically speaking, are Bucky and _you_."

Steve stared at him, unable to take it in. "But that's... I can't."

"You can't outside of a lab and a lot of cellular engineering," Sam corrected gently. "Your chromosomal abnormalities? Turns out Bucky's got the same ones. Whatever the serum did to both of you, it rearranged your DNA in pretty much the same way. They tried before to clone Bucky, or to--to make children--"

_Breed him_ , Sam hadn't said. Steve's brain seemed to be floating somewhere very quiet and calm, a couple of feet outside his body.

"But it never worked, nothing was viable. Then they unfroze you, and tested _your_ DNA, and figured out that you two matched up. So they took a donor egg and stripped out the donor's DNA and replaced it with yours, fertilized it with genetic material from Bucky, and--after they tried it enough times--got Teddy."

Sam squinted at the screen, scrolling. "And--oh, huh. I didn't know they could _do_ that. You really are the mom."

"Sam," Steve said sharply. 

Sam gave him an apologetic look and turned fully away from the laptop. "Genetically, moms and dads can kind of be distinguished in the offspring's DNA. Or--well, at the cellular level, anyway. Have you ever heard of mitochondrial DNA?"

Steve shook his head slightly, although the phrase sounded vaguely familiar. It had turned up in some documentary he'd half-seen once, or a science news headline he'd glimpsed. 

"Mitochondria are structures inside the cell," Sam explained. "They produce the energy to run the cell, and they have their own separate DNA: mitochondrial DNA. It's different from the DNA that runs the whole body, it just runs each individual mitochondrion. Egg cells have mitochondria, but sperm cells don't, so when a baby is conceived and cells start dividing, the only mitochondria around are mom's. So the mDNA in my body is identical to my mom's, because every cell of my body has copies of the mitochondria from her egg cell."

Steve looked down at his hands, frowning. "But the mDNA in my body isn't identical to _my_ mom's, is it?"

"Right," Sam said, and by the sound of his voice Steve could tell he was looking at the computer again. "Serum, Vita Rays, something, it drastically altered your mDNA. Something like ten thousand years' worth of mutations in one generation. Bucky's changed too, but not nearly as much. When they tried to clone him, or do normal reproduction, it never worked. They hit on the mDNA idea about ten years ago and tried dumping a bunch of his mitochondria into the egg. That made a few embryos survive a little longer, but nothing anywhere near viability."

"So it had to be mine," Steve said. "My mitochondria... made enough energy to grow an enhanced baby?"

"Probably, yeah," Sam agreed. "The speed of the changes you underwent is way faster than what they did to Bucky--and even faster than fetal development, which is the highest level of activity any normal human ever undergoes at the cellular level. So it had to be you. Congratulations, Dad."

Steve's head jerked up. Sam met his eyes readily. He was really smiling this time, a gentle, patient smile.

Steve looked toward the open door of the darkened bathroom. He was on his feet without thinking, walking softly over to see the lump of Teddy asleep under his blanket, half on top of the shield. Steve's shield. 

His father's shield.

Steve was on his knees somehow. He tugged the blanket back gently, just enough to reveal Teddy's face, flushed pink with trapped warmth. Steve still couldn't see anything but Bucky in Teddy's face, but if Sam was right... if the files were right...

He blinked rapidly, his eyes filling with tears as he looked down at his sleeping son.

* * *

It kept hitting Sam in waves, and he could see the same thing happening to Steve. It was one thing to read and comprehend the facts of the case: Steve was Teddy's biological father (or mother) along with Bucky.

Actually getting his head around it was something else again. He had no idea what this did to the calculus of his relationship with Steve, but there couldn't be anything in Steve's life _not_ affected by this, in the long run. 

Sam had to admit to himself, he also felt a stirring of jealousy--and uglier than that, fear--when he considered the fact that Steve and Bucky were bound together forever in the person of their son. Worse, Bucky wasn't just out there somewhere--he was almost certainly nearby, in possession of Steve's helmet. Steve's helmet which he'd pulled from the wreckage of the building where their son had been housed until a few hours before Bucky showed up there.

Sam didn't know what conclusions to draw from that. He came up with a lot of nasty ones while he was hunting through the cryptically named files for information more broadly useful than catalogs of every diaper change Teddy had had in his entire life. He wasn't sure if Steve had processed the coincidence, or much of anything; he kept stopping what he was doing every ten minutes to just stare at Teddy, awestruck. 

Even after Teddy woke up halfway through the afternoon, going straight back to his furious inconsolable mood from earlier, Steve kept looking at him with wonder. It didn't actually displace the occasional expression of panic. Sam could almost see him thinking, _Oh God, this is forever. I'm your dad._

They got Teddy to eat a belated lunch, which settled him down from constantly enraged to more quietly miserable. He kept roaming around the room, toddling along the edges of things, crawling when there was nothing to hold on to, looking for something. Steve's shield would distract him briefly, but it was obviously not what he wanted; when Sam or Steve tried to pick him up he would let himself be soothed for a few minutes before he started wiggling and crying _wee-oo_ and had to be put down again.

"He's homesick, isn't he," Steve said after a while, sitting on the end of one bed and watching Teddy pat his hand sadly against a stretch of bare wall. "That place--that was all he's ever known. Everyone he knew is gone, every _thing_ he knew. He can't ever go back to the place he was born."

And it wasn't like Teddy was the only person in the room who'd had that problem. Sam gave up on the files and went to sit close beside Steve. "There's gotta be some of that, yeah, but kids-- _shit_ \--"

Sam lunged at Teddy just as Teddy reached behind the stand the TV was on. He had no idea if there was a bare outlet or power strip back there, but he couldn't wait to find out when Teddy got electrocuted. 

Teddy howled in surprise and rage as Sam swung him up into the air--and possibly pain, Sam realized, as he held Teddy to his chest. He'd whacked Teddy's arm against the corner of the TV stand as he pulled him away; there was a little red mark on his pale skin.

"Sorry, sorry," Sam murmured, to Teddy or maybe to Steve, who was looking startled and stricken too. "Couldn't let you go poking around for the electrical sockets, kiddo."

Steve's eyes widened at that, and he jumped up to survey the room before he came back to look at Teddy's arm. His hand nearly covered Teddy's entire forearm, and Teddy only screamed louder at being held still--although not loud enough to block out the sound of a knock at the door.

Sam saw Steve's gaze turn suddenly focused, calculating. He pressed a kiss to Teddy's flushed cheek, and another to Sam's mouth, before he gestured for Sam to take Teddy into the bathroom. Sam went, getting out of the direct sightline. There was no point trying to conceal their position; Teddy was loudly and thoroughly giving them away.

* * *

He couldn't stop thinking about the mission. He clung to the memory of Steve; he hadn't let the helmet out of his sight, even when he was in the safehouse. He had cleaned it carefully so that he could see the perfect blueness of it and remember that this belonged to Steve. Cap. His friend. 

He knew a few things about Steve, jumbled and fogged over. He knew that he could trust Steve. He knew that if Steve had a mission he would not fail in it. 

But this mission--this was not a mission he had shared with Steve. This mission was something else, something lost in the vast blankness of his non-memories. His missions were--had been--for HYDRA for so long. He'd been used for things Steve shouldn't have to do. 

Steve wasn't a killer, he didn't think. Not like him. Steve was soldier, a leader. Of course he had killed men. But he-- _Bucky_ , he reminded himself--Bucky was a different kind of killer. The kind who was sent alone to places he shouldn't have been, places no one should have been. 

He had had a mission there. He had been supposed to kill someone, and Steve had gone there and shown his face. Looked them in the eye.

Steve might not... but Bucky _trusted_ Steve. Steve was good. He would take orders from Steve, if Steve gave them.

But the mission was--the mission was _necessary_. Vitally necessary. And he had no idea what had really happened there. He had no idea what Steve would decide to do about the mission. 

Bucky showered, shaved, and dressed, all of which felt like necessary preparation. When he was ready to go he left the safehouse--a vehicle with current tabs and a full tank of gas was provided in the garage--and set out driving. Searching. 

He didn't know what he was looking for until he found it. _The right kind of place_. The place where Steve would have gone to ground--near to the base, though not the nearest. Direct exits from each room, lights not too plentiful, no buildings overlooking. Rental car outside, like a sign that said _strangers hiding here_. 

He rummaged in the kit he'd assembled from supplies in the safehouse--things he would need, three guns, an assortment of knives, even more tools and devices--and came up with a directional microphone.

He slipped the earpiece into place and the sound of a baby's furious wailing hit him like a physical thing. His reaction was instant, wordless, something that went beyond _mission_. This was a reflex, ungovernable. He was out of the truck and striding toward the door before he had any idea what he planned to do when he got there.

* * *

Steve grabbed his shield while Sam took what cover there was with Teddy. He held the shield in front of himself as he checked the peephole, and then his heart went wild, his ears ringing with adrenaline. He stepped back and slapped the locks open, yanking the door wide to see Bucky on the threshold, unobtrusively dressed in jeans and layered t-shirts, a dark cap covering his long hair. 

He was rubbing his chin when Steve opened the door, and Steve was paralyzed by the familiarity of the gesture. That was Bucky checking the closeness of his shave--about to go out on a date, or about to kiss Steve and worried about leaving stubble burn. His heart raced with anticipation, delight, shock.

"Bucky--"

Bucky gave him a short nod, barely meeting his eyes before he pushed into Steve's space, through the door and past him. Steve pivoted to follow, dazed by the passing touch, as Bucky said in a low, rough voice, "What did you do to him? Why's he crying like that?"

Steve followed Bucky's gaze toward the bathroom door. _Teddy_ , Jesus, right. This was about Teddy. "He--Sam--"

Sam stepped cautiously into view with Teddy in his arms. Bucky froze, and then he spoke a quick stream of Russian in a much softer voice. Steve caught about half a word from the tumble of unfamiliar syllables.

But what he thought he heard was _bear_.

Teddy froze too, staring transfixed for an instant in Sam's arms. Steve remembered the way Teddy had stared around at all the strangers when they ventured out to Target, the suspended moment before he flipped out at another new thing. The silence was deafening while it lasted, and then Teddy screamed and threw all his weight against Sam's grip.

But he was lunging _toward_ Bucky.

The understanding felt like a lightning strike. Steve felt just like that--pinned to the ground by electricity, or maybe by the melted soles of his boots--as Sam stumbled forward a few steps to meet Bucky's quick movement. Bucky's hands, both of them, were deft and sure as he took Teddy from Sam. The baby slumped against Bucky's chest, grabbing at the sleeves of his layered shirts. The left sleeves. His left shoulder.

" _Wee-oo_ ," Teddy sobbed. " _Wee-oo, wee-oo_."

Steve hurried over, because it was suddenly obvious what Teddy had been asking for all this time, even if Steve still didn't know what the hell he was trying to say. 

"What are you--" Bucky muttered, low-voiced but at least in English again. "Hey, don't. That's weird."

Steve stopped again. He looked over at Sam, who was looking back at him with an identical expression of recognition. He'd heard it too.

Bucky didn't seem to notice, busy catching Teddy's hand as Teddy dragged on the collars of his shirts, revealing scars but no metal. "You don't want that, it's weird. Come on, it's _weird._ "

"Wee-oo," Teddy repeated, his crying ramping back up to a siren wail as he tugged against Bucky's grip. "Wee-oo, wee-oo."

Bucky let go instead of tightening his grip to restrain him, and Teddy shoved his left hand into Bucky's collar, going suddenly quiet when he got his hand to Bucky's shoulder under his shirt. Steve could see his little hand flexing under the layers of fabric, and Bucky had an odd, frozen look on his face.

"Is he hurting you?" Steve asked quietly. He'd seen pictures of the mess of scarring around Bucky's shoulder; from what he could guess from outside Bucky's clothes, Teddy was jabbing his fingers into the seam where flesh and metal joined.

Bucky looked up from Teddy to stare blankly at Steve, and then he looked down again as he shook his head. "Doesn't hurt, it just feels... Weird."

"Wee-oo," Teddy mumbled, resting his cheek against Bucky's shoulder next to the bump of his hand. 

"Shh," Bucky said, shifting his weight and bringing his right hand up to stroke gently over Teddy's hair. "You sound tired, baby bear. Go to sleep."

Teddy snuggled in closer, and Bucky's arms curled gently around him as Bucky started to sway steadily, rocking him. 

Steve finally tore his gaze away to Sam, who made a face of exaggerated shocked delight; Steve couldn't help responding with a huge grin, sidling over to Sam to lean on him as he watched. He honestly didn't know whether he was gladder to know that Bucky had this bond with Teddy, or that there was, at last, someone around who could console Teddy when he was upset. 

It didn't really matter. Bucky was here. They were all together now.

* * *

The grip of instinct loosened as the baby relaxed into sleep in his arms, and Bucky had time to put the pieces together. His mission. Steve, here with--Sam, the one with wings--and--and this--

Bucky looked up to find Steve and Sam leaning against each other (Steve's arm around Sam's waist, Bucky noted, but he couldn't divert any attention to think about what that meant). They were smiling for some reason as they watched him with the baby. Maybe they didn't understand; maybe they were just glad that the baby wasn't crying anymore.

He imagined, suddenly, those cries not winding down into sleepy noises, but being cut off sharply into silence. He shook his head at Steve.

"I didn't know," he said. "Steve, I didn't know it was a baby. I didn't know."

Steve blinked, dropping his arm from Sam and taking a half-step toward Bucky. "You didn't know what was a baby, Buck?"

"I went to the--to the--I was looking for something. But I didn't know what, I swear I didn't know it was a baby." 

The horror was rising in him with every second that sleeping weight rested on his chest, yet he couldn't bear the thought of putting the baby down, tugging those little fingers away from his scars. Bucky couldn't make him cry again, when he was so warm and quiet in Bucky's arms.

This was what he'd been looking for--this baby, soft and warm and defenseless. _Baby bear_.

Steve shook his head. "Neither did I, Buck. I thought I was looking for you."

Bucky dismissed that with a jerk of his chin, not having a hand free to swat it away. It didn't matter why Steve was there, what he was looking for. Steve would have done the right thing; of course he would. Steve would never hurt a baby, even if this one didn't seem to know that.

Steve might not be any good with babies, but there was nothing on earth that could make him hurt one. Bucky knew that without having to remember a damn thing.

But he would swear this hadn't been his first time coming to the place. He looked down at the sleeping child-- _medvezhonok_ \--and remembered that. He had been there before. How many missions? How many...

"Was he the only one?" Bucky asked, his voice coming out in a strange croak.

"Yeah," Steve said, at the same time Sam said, "He is now."

Steve jerked away from Sam, staring like this was new information. Bucky froze. Stopped rocking the baby. Stopped breathing. 

Sam raised his hands placatingly. "The files on him, they talk about him being the first success. I'm guessing that means the first viable one, but for whatever reason, they call him Specimen Six. So--there may have been others, before, I don't know. But you both have a right to know that. He was the only one there last night, though, we know that for sure."

Five others. Five failures. Who better to dispatch them than a machine? And then he had been sent for the sixth, the success...

But there was something else in what Sam said. "What right."

"Bucky," Steve said softly, stepping closer. "Look at him. I saw it as soon as I saw his face."

Bucky looked down and saw the round curve of a baby's cheek, a dark fan of eyelashes, bear-brown hair. He shifted the baby in a practiced motion, tugging his hand free of the join of his shoulder, settling him instead in the crook of the metal arm. 

The baby mumbled in his sleep, eyes opening the barest sliver before they closed again. The baby nestled his cheek against the metal arm, slightly softened by two shirts, and now Bucky could see his face: a baby's face, round cheeked. He had a cleft chin. He was sleeping.

"You don't see it?" Steve prodded.

Bucky shook his head, but he still couldn't take his eyes away from the sleeping child. The arm was not meant for this and yet it felt good to use its strength this way. 

But that did not erase what he had done to this child's five predecessors--his brothers. 

"He's yours, Buck. Yours and mine, actually."

Bucky looked up at Steve. "What the hell--" but understanding came crashing over him before he could get the words out. 

Steve smiled wider, shaky but happy. "Our son, Buck. He's ours--he looks so much like you I knew that much even before I read the files, but he's mine too. Science is a hell of a thing."

"They were trying," Bucky said. He barely heard his own voice over the rushing in his ears. "They were making more. Soldiers."

There was no other reason to do--whatever they must have had to do--to make children that were his and Steve's. 

And who better than the soldier to dispose of the failures? 

His own child-- _Steve's child_ \--and before this one, five others--had been his mission. They had set him to seek his own child, who lay trustingly in his metal arm, who didn't know enough to fear even that. He had come to a place he had already visited so many times it had become familiar even without memories, seeking this sleeping child.

But Steve got there first. 

"Take him," Bucky said. His whole body was trembling with some desperate need--to fight, to be sick, to be _anywhere else_. "Steve, _take him_."

Steve just stood there looking stunned and apologetic. Sam stepped in and scooped the baby out of Bucky's arms, held carefully motionless so that he would not--he didn't know what he might do. His hands moved so often on automatic, obeying commands he had not known to give, leading him to places he hadn't known to go. At any moment they might remember to complete the mission.

"Bucky, don't you--"

"No," Bucky said hoarsely, backing quickly to the door without taking his eyes off the baby--his son, _Steve's son_ \-- _two shall become one flesh_ \--sleeping innocently in Sam's arms. 

"No," he repeated. "I shouldn't have come. Keep him away from me."

* * *

There was a moment's silence after Bucky disappeared. Steve stared at the door for a moment, then looked at Teddy--sleeping soundly even now that it was Sam holding him--and finally at Sam. 

"Well," Sam said. "I can't tell if that went really well or really badly, but Teddy's not crying anymore."

Steve grinned, struggling against the urge to laugh hysterically. He had to do a couple of the breathing exercises he'd learned years ago--for stage fright, back in the USO show--before he managed to say, "Sam, did you _see that_?"

"I saw a bunch of things," Sam said. "You want to compare notes?"

Steve nodded, and pointed to the door without taking his eyes off Sam. "He didn't slam the door."

Sam nodded. "Yeah. He didn't even put Teddy down, he waited for me to take him, even though it was pretty obvious he was ready to crawl out of his own skin."

Steve winced at that--he hoped Bucky wouldn't hold it against Teddy forever that he was made by HYDRA--but even so. "And his arm--Sam, did you hear what he said? _We-ird_." 

Steve said it the way Bucky had said it, broken distinctly into two sing-song syllables, exaggerated for a baby's ears.

"Wee-oo," Sam agreed. "Teddy's been asking for his pop's metal arm by name, as far as he knows. Bucky told him so. _That's weird_."

"Which means Bucky... but Bucky doesn't know him," Steve said. "Teddy remembers Bucky, but obviously Bucky doesn't remember--"

"Which is worrying me," Sam said. "Because Bucky's gotta have been talking to him pretty recently--Teddy's got one, maybe two words, which is about right for his age, but he can't have started talking even that much more than a month or so ago."

The helicarriers had gone down--that goddamn bank vault had been cleared, the chair destroyed, the technicians who survived arrested or scattered--four months ago. 

"So the people who had Teddy also had Bucky?" Steve shook his head. "But he wasn't there."

"But they knew he was coming," Sam countered. "Natasha said he picked up your helmet before dawn, within hours of the explosion. They didn't want him to find them, and they didn't want him to find Teddy. Somebody tipped you off because they wanted Teddy to get out safely, but they knew Bucky was coming."

"Because he'd been there before," Steve put in. "A week, a month ago--to teach Teddy to say wee-oo."

"I'm guessing a lot more than that--why does Teddy want to _cuddle_ with a metal arm? Why is that what he looks for when he's upset?"

"Because it's familiar. It's comforting. It's his pop," Steve said, looking down at Teddy, asleep in Sam's arms, limp and trusting because Bucky had been here and put him to sleep. "They must have let Bucky see him again and again--before Insight, maybe, but continuing after--which means this wasn't in the data dump. This was some splinter group, something secret even within Hydra."

"And they made Bucky forget," Sam agreed. "Again and again. So he had no idea what he came here for, he just knew--"

"Oh, God." Steve sat down abruptly on the bed, looking up at Sam as the connections belatedly clicked into place. "He just knew he had to come here. He thought it was a mission. He probably thinks the first five--"

Sam's eyes went wide, and he stumbled over and sat down at Steve's side. "That's not-- _shit_ , Steve, when I said _viable_ , I meant--I don't think the first five survived to be _born_. I don't think they made it out of the second trimester."

Steve nodded. "I--after a second, I figured. But Bucky didn't, and if that's what he's thinking, he's not going to consider other possibilities. He thinks he killed his own--"

Steve felt sick at the thought, and reached over reflexively to rest a hand on Teddy's round little stomach, feeling it rise and fall with his breathing.

"Shit," Sam repeated. "Steve, I'm sorry, I shouldn't have--"

Steve shook his head. "I shouldn't have sprung it on him either--that Teddy's his. Ours. It's been hard enough for me to get my head around, and I'm not--" Steve waved his free hand helplessly, at a loss to sum up what Bucky was. "God, that was--not how I was expecting that to go."

Sam nodded beside him, and they sat together for a moment in silence, catching up with the last several minutes. Teddy's breathing, slightly damp, was the loudest sound in the room. Steve couldn't stop seeing Bucky's face, the calm that had gone over him while he held Teddy, and the horror that had so quickly replaced it. And now he was gone. What would he do next? 

"We know he's confused," Steve said slowly. "But we know that he knows me, and he doesn't want to hurt Teddy."

"And he found us," Sam said. "Found Teddy--Steve, he's gotta have a hell of a paternal instinct going on for it to cut through everything else. You saw how gentle he was, and he knew just how to calm Teddy down. That was the first thing he asked when he came in the door, he wanted to know what we did to make Teddy cry. I'd bet anything that's what brought him back--and I'll bet if he came back once, he'll come back again. He wants to be close to Teddy, even if he doesn't understand why yet."

"So all we have to do," Steve concluded, "is find out what actually happened to him here, and who did what to Teddy, and whether either or both of them are still in danger, and--"

"Yeah," Sam said, "but I think this has been enough for one day, man. There's no sign that anybody's coming after Teddy or us right now, and we can't do anything about Bucky. I think you and me and Teddy could all stand not to have anything too exciting happen for about the next sixteen hours, so let's just order in dinner and get some rest, okay?"

Steve took a breath, looking down at Teddy, limp in Sam's arms, and made himself think past his instinct to keep moving, keep pushing, _do something_. Anything he could do right now would probably mean waking Teddy up--and it would definitely mean pushing Sam and himself when they were both still only a day past a rough mission. 

"Were we in Antarctica two days ago?" Steve asked, leaning back on his hands.

"As a matter of fact we were," Sam agreed. "I was gonna point that out next if you fought me."

Steve shook his head. "Dinner. Sleep. Maybe find somewhere to do a load of laundry tomorrow if we're not going home."

Sam nodded, and Steve put a hand on his shoulder, tugging him to lean back. Sam followed, turning as he did, and they settled facing each other, curled like parentheses around Teddy. Sam was still cradling the baby against his chest, and Steve reached out and brushed Teddy's round pink cheek with the backs of his fingers. 

"If anybody comes for you," Steve said quietly. "I'll stop them. That's all we have to know right now."

"I don't think anybody's gonna get that far," Sam said, almost yawning the words. His eyes were already closed, and Steve didn't bother to ask what made Sam so sure.


	7. Chapter 7

He got less than six miles away before the insistent tug of the mission made him pull over. He leaned his forehead against the steering wheel and made himself think of the defenseless child, _Steve's child_ , until he was shaking with horror and nausea. It was all too easy to picture the blood on his hands--five other children, five brothers, five _sons_ \--and still the urge to turn and go back would not relent.

He could feel the weight of the child asleep in his arms. Without thinking he raised his hand to the seam of his shoulder, digging his thumb in where those little fingers had pressed.

The child had known what he would find under Bucky's shirt. He had known exactly how to get his hand down the collar to reach--and Bucky had known the exact movements required to extract that hand again. 

He shook his head. He had only ever had one kind of mission. There had been five others; now there was only one. 

But this one had been the success. Had they let him... perhaps when he came for the others? Had they let him see his surviving son each time? 

But he couldn't remember anything at all. Nothing came to him--not the child, not the other killings, nothing. Memories returned to him every hour, every day, but where the child should have been--the children--there was nothing.

He pressed his hand against the metal arm, simulating the weight of a child sleeping there.

He had to turn around. He had to keep watch. If he had been sent to kill the child, they would realize that he hadn't finished the job. They would send others. Steve and Sam shouldn't be left to do the fighting--that would let the danger get too close to the boy. They needed an outer perimeter.

And if he stayed far enough away that they couldn't see him, then there was no chance that he could harm the child without Steve and Sam stopping him.

_Papa's coming, little bear. Papa's here._

* * *

Sam woke up, sort of, when Steve murmured, "Hey, I'm gonna go for a run, okay?"

Sam cracked his eyes open and tallied up his surroundings: daylight, motel room, Steve leaning over him in the tight underlayer of his uniform. Teddy sprawled like a starfish across half the bed, and Steve's shield was tucked in on the other side of him.

"He kick you out?" Sam muttered.

"I was awake anyway," Steve said with a smile. "I'll be back quick."

"You run all the way to Columbus you better bring back hash browns," Sam muttered, closing his eyes and stretching one arm out over Teddy. He touched his fingertips to the shield, drowsily picturing how he could pull it over Teddy if anything came at them. "Still be hot when you get here, I bet." 

"I'll see what I can do," Steve muttered, and pressed a kiss to the ticklish spot at the back of Sam's neck. Sam smiled into the pillow and slept.

* * *

The next time Sam woke up, he could smell hash browns, and all of Teddy's weight was bouncing on top of his kidney. He managed to make a noise to indicate that this was a problem before he instinctively threw the kid off, and Steve said, "Whoops, got him."

The next second Teddy's weight lifted, and Teddy was crowing with delight. Sam rolled over just in time to see Steve toss him in the air; he would swear Teddy's hair brushed the ceiling, but he dropped back into Steve's hands unharmed.

"I realized why we're here while I was running." Steve sounded nearly as cheerful as Teddy as he swung him down almost to the floor and tossed him up again, still shrieking in delight. 

Sam raised his eyebrows and stretched out on his back, raising both hands to brace against the headboard as he tried to stretch a night of curling around a toddler out of his spine. "Yeah? Life, the universe, and everything? You sure that's not just super-strength endorphins talking?"

Steve snorted and tucked Teddy under his arm, grabbing a promisingly large and grease-spotted brown paper bag from the other bed. "I know why we're _here_ , as in Shelby County, Indiana. I know why this is where this particular project was located."

Sam sat up at that, then stood and took Teddy from Steve so he could use two hands to open up all the containers of breakfast, setting them out on the other bed. Teddy looked from Sam to the array of breakfast foods and signed _please_ with one hand, reaching for the Styrofoam container of pancakes with the other. 

"I take it from the way you're focused on breakfast and not throwing Teddy in the car and driving like hell that it's not because HYDRA assholes love hanging out here."

Steve shook his head, going into the bathroom for Teddy's sippy cup. Sam wrestled him into a bib and found his little blunted plastic fork and spoon. 

"No, the opposite. I think we should stay a while, because Teddy's got family here. I told you Bucky was born in Shelbyville?"

Sam nodded, using a plastic knife and fork--not nearly as sturdy as Teddy's, even if they were bigger--on the omelet Steve pushed in his direction. He offered Teddy a chunk that was just egg, and Teddy grabbed Sam's hand with both of his to pull the fork closer. 

"Bucky grew up in New York, didn't he? You met each other when you were young."

"Five and six, yeah," Steve agreed. "We met in an orphanage, actually--it wasn't all actual orphans, it was also the closest thing to foster care at the time. Bucky's ma didn't have any family living close by to help out, so when she was laid up after Josie was born, she sent Bucky to stay a while with the sisters, same as my ma did when she was working such long hours and I was too little to be alone. Our folks came and saw us on Sundays--Bucky went back home after a month or so, but every time he was allowed outside to play he'd come back and play with me."

"Because all of Bucky's extended family was here in Indiana," Sam said, the picture starting to come clear. "You think..."

Steve tilted his head. "Not just _extended_ family--Bucky's youngest sister wound up here. Their folks sent her to stay with relatives after Bucky shipped out and the older girls got war jobs. And of Bucky's three sisters, she's the only one who had daughters who had daughters who'd be of childbearing age right now--and their mDNA would be identical to Bucky's, at least before the serum. Closer than anybody else's, anyway."

Sam opened his mouth and then shoved eggs in instead of saying anything. Steve fed Teddy a bite of pancakes, and Sam let go of Teddy when he immediately lunged toward Steve, lured to the sweet side. 

"And any other relatives on Bucky's mother's side--women in the maternal line, they'd all be the same, wouldn't they? I don't know how that would matter, exactly, but they had to get an egg from somewhere, they had to get someone to carry the baby, and if it took them six tries to get Teddy I'm guessing that wasn't easy. Given everything else they were doing, seems like they would've put a lot of importance on a genetic relationship, and I can't think of any other good reason they'd be doing this here. Which means Teddy's mom--maybe both of Teddy's moms--are probably here somewhere."

 _If they're alive_ , Sam thought, and breakfast lost some of its appeal at the thought of what could have happened to the egg donor or the surrogate. They had left Teddy alone in a facility, nearly blew him up, and Teddy didn't know a damn thing about what they'd done to him. And Bucky, who'd only missed being blown up with Teddy by a few hours--he didn't know a damn thing either.

"What do you say, Teddy?" Steve asked, jerking Sam out of his thoughts. "You want to go meet your Aunt Gertie today, and find out if all your girl cousins are present and accounted for?"

 _Please_ , Teddy signed enthusiastically, with his eyes on Steve's fork.

* * *

Steve glanced back at the truck as he stood on Gertie's porch. He'd tried twice to call ahead, getting voicemail both times, before he finally realized that it was in fact Sunday. Gertie was probably at church. Sam had tried searching Teddy's files, running them through the freeware indexer Tony had anonymously distributed on the internet after Natasha's data dump, but the little laptop hadn't processed all the files yet. So far he hadn't been able to find anything obviously identifying about Teddy's non-Steve mother or mothers. 

Their best bet to find her, or them, was to talk to Gertie and try to track likely women in the family tree. 

There was a car in Gertie's driveway. Steve's laborious study of modern cars identified it as about ten years old, a sensible domestic four-door sedan in a very bland gray. The _Coexist_ bumper sticker, itself somewhat battered, suggested that the car belonged to someone younger than Gertie herself, or else Gertie was a very modern sort of 86-year-old.

Sam made a shooing motion from where he sat in the back seat next to Teddy, and Steve smiled and nodded, turning back toward the door.

He was reaching for the bell when the door opened, and Steve was struck with a sense of surreally perfectly recognition. 

"Gertie."

She didn't look exactly like the fifteen-year-old he remembered; she looked five years older, just like she should. A lovely young woman with Bucky's dark hair and silvery blue eyes. 

She was dressed in blue jeans and an INDIANA sweatshirt, frowning slightly. "Do you know what year it is?"

Steve blinked, and recognized that this was, obviously, not Gertie but a granddaughter--the owner of the car, probably. 

"2015," Steve said, offering his hand. "Sorry. I'm guessing you already know who I am, but all I know is you look a hell of a lot like Gertie Barnes did at your age--Gertie Barnes Elkins, right?"

The granddaughter nodded, and now that she wasn't concerned about his mental balance he could see her trying to remain cool and unaffected by the appearance of Steve Rogers on her grandmother's doorstep. "Hannah Gertrude Pettit--my mom's an Elkins. Grandma's making lunch, if you want to come in."

Steve glanced back toward the truck again, then said hesitantly, "Is she... how is she?"

Hannah folded her arms, half-obscuring the name of her college and making the shape of her chest harder to miss. "She's fine, I guess? She's not, like--her memory's good. She moves pretty slow, but she's okay. Have you seen her since...?"

Steve shook his head. "Talked to her on the phone once, exchanged a few letters, but... this is the first time I've been out this way, and I don't think she's been to New York or DC the last few years."

Hannah shrugged. "She's old. But she's--"

Hannah jumped and yelped, the self-consciously adult pose dissolving instantly as she whirled around to reveal Gertie standing behind her, brandishing a wooden spoon. 

"Where are your manners," Gertie demanded, and Steve felt the same surreal shock of recognition all over again. He could see fifteen-year-old Gertie in this eighty-six-year-old woman, almost as clearly as he'd seen her in Hannah. Just like with Peggy, the images overlaid each other in his mind, showing him the past and present oddly superimposed. He recognized this old version of her voice from the phone call, but now he could _see_ her.

"It's my fault, Gert," Steve said, stepping onto the threshold. "I'm the one who kept her standing in the door answering my nosy questions."

Gertie shook her head and brandished the spoon at him; there was no mistaking that she was just as willing to use it on him as on her granddaughter. "So what on earth are you doing in Shelbyville, loitering on my porch? Are you mixed up with whatever blew up over at Camp Atterbury? Everybody's talking about how nobody's talking about it--was it those Nazis of yours?"

Steve opened and closed his mouth, briefly fighting and immediately losing against the impulse to speak to her exactly like his surrogate little sister. "HYDRA's not _my Nazis_ , Gert, for God's sake. And I didn't blow anything up, but I did rescue someone." 

He hesitated, looking into Gertie's eyes. "That's what I wanted to talk to you about. Inside, sitting down, if you don't mind."

Gertie put her hand to her mouth--still holding that wooden spoon, but that didn't change the look in her shining eyes. Hannah edged closer, putting a hand under her grandmother's elbow. 

Steve shook his head slightly. "Please, Gert, let's go inside. Okay? Let's sit down and talk."

She nodded, turning toward Hannah. "You go--go in the kitchen, honey, finish--whatever I was doing in there."

Hannah shot Gertie a worried look, then an even more worried one at Steve. Steve took another half step in, putting his hand under Gertie's other elbow. "Go on, Hannah. It's all right."

"Gimme that spoon, anyway," Hannah said, with a valiant effort at calm. "I don't want you smacking Captain America with it."

"I'll smack him if he needs smacking," Gertie said, reviving a little from that first shock, but she gave Hannah the spoon and waved her off. 

Steve glanced back toward the truck again. He wasn't sure if he'd be able to hear Teddy from this far if he was crying, but Sam flashed him a thumbs up, so he was probably fine. Sam had all of Teddy's books and snacks and the shield, so there wasn't anything Steve could do to placate Teddy that Sam couldn't do just as well. 

Steve waved, scanned the immediate area one more useless time for Bucky, and followed Gertie into the house. She led him into the front room--parlor, probably, in an old farmhouse like this. There were dozens of photos crowded onto the walls, and Steve's gaze was caught instantly by one featuring a row of dark-haired kids sitting on the same porch he'd just been standing on. 

Bucky, age twelve, was the third one from the left, grinning with his arm wrapped securely around the kid next to him, who looked to be about three years old.

Gertie laughed, a slightly hoarse sound, making Steve turn around. She shook her head, waving him toward the couch as she lowered herself into an armchair beside it. "Never fails. Seventy years later, and you still can't see anything else if my brother's in the room."

Steve felt himself flush a little as he took his seat. Gertie was a lethal combination of _nice old lady_ and _Bucky's baby sister_ , when it came to this particular topic. "I, uh--I mean--"

"Oh, Lord, Becca was right," Gertie said instead. "I wondered when we talked on the phone, but I can see it on your face plain as day, Steven Rogers. Becca must be so mad she didn't live to find out for sure--but I suppose she's been giving Bucky an earful about that for ten years now."

Steve did wince at that, dropping his gaze to his hands. 

Gertie's hand settled gently on his. "She didn't mind, not really. I certainly don't. It's all right nowadays--one of my grandsons is that way, and he's getting married next year. It's good to know Bucky had that much happiness, at least. You and him both."

"Gert," Steve said. He should have told her this months ago, and now there was no gentle way to say it. "Gertie, he's not dead. Bucky's alive."

Her hand tightened hard on his for a second, painfully, and then relaxed as she said, "He's not--what--Steven Rogers, _what_ \--"

Steve slid down to his knees and looked up into her pale, wide-eyed face. Her eyes were old, a little clouded, but still so much like Bucky's. He wrapped his hands around hers, bird-boned and fragile, shaking now. 

"He's--he was like me, he had some kind of serum. I didn't know that when he fell, Gert, I swear I didn't know he could have survived or I never would have left him for anyone else to find. But HYDRA found him, and they--"

"And you rescued him?" Gertie asked, her voice shaking. She sounded like a little girl again. "After all these years, the other night--right here--"

Steve gritted his teeth and shook his head. "No, I--I've known for a little while. They were forcing him to fight for them. That battle in the spring, on the helicarriers--I saw him there. He got away in the chaos, and I've been looking for him ever since, running all over the world trying to find him. Even that disaster in Sokovia started with us going after HYDRA. But I couldn't find him anywhere, and he wasn't at Camp Atterbury the other night."

She shook her head slightly. "Then why--"

"The person I rescued from Camp Atterbury was his son." Steve shifted his fingers to touch Gertie's pulse, beating fast but strong. She was completely still now, just staring at him. "He's just a baby, Gert, and he's--Teddy is my son, too. They did something with my DNA and Bucky's, and he's ours. Both of ours."

Gertie's stunned look hardened slowly into a frown. "My brother is alive."

Steve nodded.

"And seventy years after he was supposed to have died, Nazis got you both in trouble and now you have some kind of test tube baby out of wedlock."

Steve winced and nodded again. "He actually--"

"And after you rescue that baby from _Nazis_ and come here to tell me about him," Gertie barreled on, "you _leave my nephew outside in the car_? In _August_?" Gertie yanked one hand free and shoved at his shoulder. "Steven Grant Rogers, you never did have the sense God gave a goose, go get that baby this instant!"

"Sam's with him," Steve offered. "Sam Wilson--" 

Gertie got her other hand free and swatted him on one ear. "You left _Sam Wilson_ out in the car like you're not sure if I'll let a black man in the house?"

"He's..." Steve cleared his throat. "I thought I should tell you first, because Sam's my--we're--"

Gertie's irate look softened, and she saved Steve from having to put a word to something he and Sam hadn't actually discussed yet. "Well if you're too sweet on him to finish a sentence he must be nearly as special as my brother was." She frowned again. "Is? Lord, Bucky, what a mess. But go and get him and the baby--what did you say the baby's name is?"

"Teddy," Steve said, then cleared his throat and tried saying the whole thing out loud for the first time. "Theodore Franklin Barnes-Rogers, I guess, properly. Once I get him a birth certificate."

"What a thing to do to a child." Gertie shook her head and used Steve's shoulder to pull herself up to her feet. She was still muttering as she turned away toward the kitchen. " _Theodore Franklin_ , Lord have mercy on him. Teddy, though, that's not too bad. Go get Sam and Teddy, and I'll make sure we've got enough lunch for everyone. Still got a high chair around, at least..."

Steve backed cautiously toward the door.

* * *

Sam didn't know how Bucky had done it, but he felt eyes on him about two minutes after Steve disappeared into the big old farm house.

Sam knew better than to question his instincts. He looked over at Teddy, who was baby-babbling to the shiny metal bowl from Target that was his favorite toy today, patting it and turning it over and over. Sam unbuckled him, which got Teddy's attention in a big hurry; he crowed gleefully when Sam settled Teddy on his lap instead. 

Sam ignored the prickling feeling on the back of his neck and put Teddy exactly where he was most visible, perched on Sam's knee and making a separate silhouette visible through the windows. 

"Can you wave for Pop?" Sam asked softly, pulling out _The Very Hungry Caterpillar_. "Say hi, Teddy, tell Pop you want him to come on over."

Teddy banged the bottom of the little bowl like a tambourine, and nothing else obvious happened before Steve came to get them when Sam was halfway through the book. 

He looked sheepish when he opened the door and leaned in, but smiled when Teddy enthusiastically waved his bowl with one hand, smacking at the book with the other. His hand darted out to catch the bowl as it flew out of Teddy's hand, sparing the rental that much more damage. 

"Hey, guys." Steve leaned into the truck, holding the bowl steady for Teddy to pull on but meeting Sam's eyes. "Gertie read me the riot act about leaving you waiting in the driveway--you wanna come in and have some lunch?"

"My mama didn't raise me to turn down old ladies' hospitality," Sam agreed. "Especially not family."

Steve's lips twitched into a sad little smile. "She's definitely that. I told her we're together--she'd already guessed that Bucky and I were, so. That's all on the table."

Sam could have pointed out that that was more than Steve had yet told _him_ in so many words, but... Steve had just come out to an 86-year-old lady who was the closest thing to family he had in this world in order to tell her Sam wasn't just along for the ride as a fellow Avenger, so maybe Sam didn't have to pick a fight with him in the driveway. 

"That's a pretty big lunch." Sam pushed Teddy into Steve's hands and followed him out, snagging the diaper bag to bring along. 

Steve, with Teddy on his hip looking around wildly, led the way into the house and into a big kitchen with a wooden table that had obviously been through the wars. A high chair had been set up between two regular chairs, as good as written name cards for that whole side of the table. The dark-haired college student who'd answered the door was setting out plates, and her eyes widened with startled recognition when she looked past Steve and saw Sam standing there.

Sam gave her a little wave and a low-key _Yep, Falcon here_ smile. 

She smiled back and dropped her gaze quickly. Gertie, who was over by the stove, shaking a salad dressing bottle, said, "Steven, are you going to make introductions?"

Steve looked up from where he'd obviously gotten completely distracted by the top of Teddy's head as Teddy hid against his shoulder from the latest new strangers. "Sorry--Gert, Hannah, this is Teddy, and this is Sam Wilson. Sam, Gertie Elkins, Bucky's youngest sister, and her granddaughter, Hannah Pettit."

"Ma'am," Sam said. "Hannah. Nice to meet you--thanks for inviting us in for lunch."

Gertie shook her head, flapping a hand at Sam. "Honestly, how could I do any less for you boys when you show up with my nephew, tell me my brother's alive out there somewhere--" 

Gertie turned sharply away, her voice wobbling on the words. Steve's gaze jerked up from Teddy's limpet impersonation to look anxiously at Gertie and then at Sam. 

Sam held his hands out for Teddy, and Steve turned to give Sam access. "Come here, sweetheart, it's just me. It's Sam, you know me."

Clear as a damn bell, as he twisted and lunged into Sam's grip, Teddy yelped, "Sah! Sah-Sah!"

Sam froze with Teddy held halfway between him and Steve, his eyes locked on Steve's as they both realized what Teddy had just said. There was a second where Sam reflexively braced for Steve to look hurt, or jealous, and Steve's expression was too stunned to read. 

Then Steve grinned and lunged in, squishing Teddy gently between them as he hugged Sam, pressing a half-hidden kiss to the side of his throat. 

"Kid has good taste," Steve muttered. The next second he pulled sharply away, like he'd realized they had an audience and he was supposed to be saying something comforting to Gertie. 

"I'm just the guy who didn't change my mind about what he's supposed to call me," Sam assured him, stepping back toward the high chair and looking down at Teddy nestled in his arms.

Teddy looked up at him from where he was clinging as close to Sam as possible and Sam wondered if he'd say it again. He was trying not to think about what it meant that his heart leaped when Teddy said his name, when Teddy knew him and preferred him to a couple of nice white ladies he was actually related to, but it was hovering right there on the tip of Teddy's tongue. If he said it one more time...

"Mih," Teddy said firmly, squirming one hand between them to circle against his chest. _Please_.

Sam snorted and shifted Teddy onto his hip as he turned to survey the beverage situation. "Yeah, Teddy, I think we can do that."

* * *

Once again he found himself approaching a familiar destination, but this one was entirely different. There was no warning reek of disaster, for one thing.

For another, memories returned to him as he caught sight of familiar landmarks--not in the ugly, drenching cascade that marked the return of his recent past, but like a series of soap bubbles bursting. He had been here long ago, as a child. This road, this place... this house. 

He knew where to shelter and watch unobserved because he had done it before. He had been small then, sneaking off to avoid extra chores. He hadn't wanted to miss being called for dinner. His grandmother's farmhouse dinners came back in a sensory rush that left him reeling, his mouth watering, even while he was trying to keep an adequate watch on approaches to the house.

He was trying not to look directly at the vehicle he'd tailed here. Steve had already gotten out and gone inside, leaving behind Sam and Teddy. 

His son--their son--whose brothers he had killed. Who he must have been set to eliminate, before Steve rescued him and took him away, leaving behind only the ruins of another HYDRA facility. 

That felt right. Familiar. Steve had done that before, during the war. Bucky had helped him then. Bucky had belonged to Steve then, and not to HYDRA. There had been no hooks in him to force him to betray his...

His Captain? His friend. His...

Steve reappeared, and went to the door of the truck. Bucky couldn't help hearing his voice, though he'd been managing to tune out Sam's. He was always listening for Steve's voice. 

"Hey, guys," Steve said now. "Gertie read me the riot act--"

He didn't hear what came after that, barely heard anything after Steve said that name.

 _Gertie_. His mind was flooded with images of a dark-haired girl with silver-blue eyes like his own, young and sweet and wild, innocent and needing protection. He remembered paper in his hands. Handwritten letters. _Love always, Gertie_.

His baby sister. She had written him letters during the war, first while he was away in training and then after, when he was overseas. When his mail caught up with him in London, weeks after Azzano, he'd had a stack of letters from her. They'd all had return addresses written on them. 

Shelbyville. Gertie. She'd been sent to Indiana, to their grandmother and assorted aunts and cousins, to keep her safe in her big brother's absence. And now Steve had come to her, brought Teddy to her. Brought _Bucky_ to her, when he couldn't trust himself, when he didn't know what mission might still be waiting to erupt up out of the darkness that swallowed his memories, and the man who had been Bucky Barnes along with them.

Bucky remembered Gertie. He remembered the first time he held her after she was born, folding two natural arms around that tiny baby wrapped in her pink blanket. He had been eleven years old then, in 1928. 

But he still couldn't remember ever seeing Teddy before last night. He couldn't remember what he'd done to the babies before Teddy, and he couldn't remember a damn thing about that HYDRA facility Steve had destroyed, but he'd known how to find it, known exactly where to go when he got inside to find the baby.

And Teddy had known him. If Bucky had arrived to carry out his mission, Teddy would have flung himself into Bucky's arms every bit as trustingly. Even as his metal hand closed over that tiny nose and mouth--

Bucky's mouth watered again, but this time in advance of the bile he barely managed to keep back. He drew away, seeking a further vantage point. Steve and Sam were taking Teddy inside; they would manage the close perimeter. Bucky would keep his distance, and watch the approaches. 

He had more than ever to protect now: his son, his baby sister, and Sam who took such good care of the baby, and Steve, who... who he would not betray. 

This was his family, gathered in a house where he had once lived. He would not fail them.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter is the last of what I already have written, so updates are going to take longer from here on out, but please bear with me! I love this story and I do want to share the rest of it with you, I've just got a lot going on right now. :)


	8. Chapter 8

Gertie regained her equilibrium during lunch by asking a lot of pointed questions about Steve and Sam's childrearing philosophies and what they'd been feeding Teddy so far. Steve didn't really _have_ a childrearing philosophy other than _don't hit them_ and _try like hell not to die until they can get along without you_. 

Luckily Sam turned out to be able to say apparently-satisfactory things like, "Well, full-on attachment parenting's not really in the cards with our careers. We're more on the free-range kids end of the spectrum anyway."

There was no saving their grocery shopping choices. Steve managed to placate Gertie by taking notes and promising to look up all the stuff she told him to definitely feed Teddy or absolutely under no circumstances feed Teddy. 

The end of the meal freed them into a less relentlessly conversational bustle of diaper-changing and dishwashing, but after that they all settled on the back porch, and Steve knew he couldn't keep putting off the actual purpose of their visit. He'd noticed Gertie and Hannah having a low-voiced debate of some kind while Sam and Steve were teaming up to wrangle Teddy into a clean diaper and then a complete change of clothes, and he'd been careful not to listen to it. The end result was that Hannah sat down on the back porch with the rest of them, though he wasn't sure whether that meant she won or Gertie had.

Steve barely had a chance to check the sightlines to the back porch--there was a lot of open ground, with a small herb garden near the porch and something between a garden patch and an actual field rising up in a profusion of green further off. There were also a couple of sheds and a long, low building that was probably a garage and workshop. 

"No barn anymore," Steve observed, remembering Bucky's stories about hayloft mischief. 

"There is not," Gertie agreed briskly, rather than pointing out where it used to be and launching into a story of when it had been torn down and why. It was clear that she was bracing for the next thing.

Steve sighed and nodded, glancing over at Teddy, who had pulled himself up at the porch railing and stood clutching the bars and looking out into the yard. Steve had a moment's oddly visceral longing to pick him up or at least touch him, but it was better if Teddy didn't notice any of this. 

"Gert, Teddy was born near here. And his DNA came from me and Bucky, but there still had to be at least one woman involved. HYDRA could have done this anywhere, but they did it near the highest concentration of close relatives of Bucky's anywhere in the country, and I'm guessing that wasn't a coincidence, so I--"

He didn't get through saying _I have to ask_ before Sam grabbed his arm. Steve looked toward him, and then past him, where Hannah was sitting very still, her eyes wide and her arms wrapped defensively around her belly. Steve felt a mingled rush of horror--that it might have been Hannah who HYDRA put through this--and giddy relief--she was here, after all, alive and safe.

It was Sam who spoke, using his gentlest speaking-to-a-scared-civilian voice. "Hannah? You know something about that?"

Hannah's staring gaze focused on Sam, then skipped past him to Steve and her grandmother. Hannah seemed to come into focus when she met Gertie's eyes. "I didn't--I mean, I'm not--"

"We all know you've never had a baby, dear, you wouldn't have that figure if you had," Gertie said briskly, knocking that idea flat. Gertie would know if Hannah had been pregnant a year ago, clearly. "But tell us what's got you looking like you've seen a ghost."

Hannah darted a glance at Teddy and then focused on Gertie again. Steve sat back, trying to fade out of her sightline so she could tell this to her grandmother rather than Captain America. At his side Sam clearly had the same thought, slouching back quietly.

"It was my freshman year of college," Hannah said, and with another quick glance at Teddy, she added, "two--two years ago, almost. Fall, my first semester, I was still living at home but I spent a lot of time on campus and there was this girl, Anna, who just--decided to be my friend, basically? She just sat down next to me one day when I was studying and--we got to be friends. I thought we were friends?

"And we talked about all kinds of things, we talked about--about being broke, everyone's broke, that's just the state of being a college student, and she told me about how she had made all this money over the summer--donating eggs. And she was going to do it again, and she thought I should too, and she gave me this brochure and--she didn't talk about it all the time but she would kind of bring it up sometimes, and she--she didn't like me drinking, we would go to parties and she was super..."

Hannah put her face in her hands. "Super _protective_ ," Hannah said, sounding close to tears. "And I thought she--she was so great, she--and then in November she just--disappeared. Dropped out, I guess. Her email didn't work anymore, her phone was disconnected. And I never saw her again."

Sam let out a loud, shaky breath, and Steve barely managed to keep his quieter. "That's... that's good, though, actually. It means they were bothering to be subtle, trying to trick you into it real gently. If you'd gone along with it, you--" 

Steve cut himself off abruptly, before he could blithely assure Hannah that she _never would have known the difference_. Never would have known what HYDRA did with her genetic material, her cells, her DNA. 

Teddy was trying determinedly to jam his head between the porch rails; Steve told himself that was why he half stood and scooped his son up, swinging him into the air. Teddy laughed delightedly, waving his arms, so Steve tossed him a little to turn him around and then swung him up again when he could see Teddy's face. 

Teddy laughed, and suddenly all Steve could see in his face was a tiny version of Bucky. His breath caught and he reeled Teddy in for a hug, which Teddy endured for a few seconds before squirming away from his grip. Steve set him down again, turning to look at the others. Hannah was staring down into her lap, Sam was watching Steve with a slightly concerned expression, and Gert was frowning in concentration.

"Nobody's been pregnant who doesn't have a baby to show for it, and nobody's up and vanished," Gert said, breaking the silence. "Not in my family or my sisters', and no cousins that I've heard about."

Steve gestured to Hannah. "It might not have been that obvious. Maybe just egg donation, maybe they had someone who was willing to carry him."

Gert nodded, flapping a hand. "I'll ask around, and get the family asking. We'll see what we can find. In the meantime, Hannah--"

Hannah shook her head as she looked up. "I have to get back to school, Grandma. I'll research, though," she added, looking up at Steve. "I'll see if I can find out about anyone who was a surrogate, or the place Anna was telling me I should try."

Steve nodded. "Thank you. And thank you for telling us."

Hannah nodded, looking away again, but she stood up and headed back inside. 

Steve made to follow, but Gertie caught his arm. "You're not going anywhere--you boys can stay right here. No point staying in a hotel when you've got family in town, and folks are going to want to meet Teddy."

Steve paled. "Gertie, people can't--we don't know who's still looking for him. I don't even have a birth certificate for him; technically I probably kidnapped him."

"You think someone in our family is call the police on you? You think my eighty-year-old cousins are HYDRA?" Gertie asked bluntly. "It's family business, they're not going to go blabbing it everywhere. And frankly if someone does show up, we've got a couple of superheroes waiting for them, don't we?"

Steve winced. "Maybe... more than two, Gert. Maybe three. Bucky showed up at the motel yesterday, and there's a pretty good chance he tailed us here. He wouldn't intentionally hurt you or Teddy, but... he's not how you remember, and if we stay here..."

Gertie raised her eyebrows. "You think my brother's not welcome in my home, Steven Rogers? You think I don't know that men come back changed after a war?"

Steve shook his head silently. "I just... I don't want to bring any trouble to your door, Gert."

"Well than you shouldn't have showed up here at all," Gertie said, flapping a hand at him. "Trouble's always following you everywhere you go--long before you started carrying a damn target around. But you're as good as a brother to me, and you--you--don't argue with me, just go get your things from the car."

"We, uh," Steve ran a hand through his hair, thinking out the possibilities. "My stuff and Sam's is back at the motel. We've got most of Teddy's things, but not all of it. We'll have to go back, at least to pick up our stuff and check out."

"So go," Gertie said, letting go of his arm. "Leave Teddy here, and you boys can have an hour of privacy--Lord knows you won't be getting much of that for the next seventeen years."

Steve opened his mouth to object, but he looked down to find that Teddy was leaning against the porch railing, rubbing his eyes with one hand and yawning. Steve looked over to Sam, who raised his eyebrows, and--yeah, they were way overdue for an actual conversation. 

Steve looked out around the yard again, trying to figure out where Bucky might have concealed himself. There was no denying that Bucky was the only person likely to have followed them here; no one else had any reason yet to suspect that Teddy was alive, or to hunt him here. 

And if Bucky thought Steve and Sam had left Teddy unprotected...

"Just remember he's different, okay?" Steve said, looking back to Gertie. "I don't think he remembers everything about his old life. Don't... don't expect too much."

Gertie's expression softened a little, and she nodded. "If he doesn't take _four years_ to come for a visit he'll still be doing better than _you_ , Steven."

He winced, and Sam snorted behind him. 

"Okay, okay," Steve said, and crouched down beside Teddy to kiss the top of his head one more time. Teddy batted at Steve absently and yawned again. Steve looked up at Gertie and said, "His blanket's out in the car, or--he likes my shield, I could--"

"Oh my God, the separation anxiety begins," Sam said, hooking two fingers into the collar of Steve's shirt and tugging. "Come on. Faster we go, faster we're back. He's gonna pass out right where he's sitting and never notice we're gone."

"I could just get his bowl from the car," Steve said, straightening up, but he let Sam tug him away. "Or--Gert, if you have a metal bowl? He likes shiny metal stuff."

"Sam, take him away," Gertie said, shaking her head and stepping around them both to go inside, letting the screen door slam shut behind her. 

Steve looked helplessly from Gertie to Teddy, still slumping against the porch railing. "Gert, should I bring Teddy inside? Do you have a crib?"

"I raised six children, Steven Rogers!" Gertie shouted back from somewhere inside. "I think I can manage one sleeping baby for an hour!"

Sam tugged again, and Steve made himself turn away.

* * *

Bucky watched a familiar-looking young woman depart from his sister's property; for a moment he thought she was Gertie. Reason asserted itself as he turned the directional mike toward her and caught a scrap of her conversation. 

_Lunch with grandma,_ she was saying, and of course she was not his sister. His sister was a grandmother by now; his sister was eighty-six years old, in a much different way from his own ninety-eight. 

It was only a few minutes later that another, more familiar vehicle departed. Bucky turned the mike on it, only to hear Sam's voice saying, "Seriously, he'll be fine. We're not going to be gone that long, and--"

Bucky hissed a string of curses through his teeth and dropped to the ground from his perch.

He hurried back toward the house, keeping to cover as much as he could without slowing down. When he had a sightline on the house he pulled out a scope, and what he saw set his heart hammering.

There was a blanket spread out on the back porch, a bright patchwork that drew the eye like a target, like a combat uniform covered in gaudy stars and stripes. And lying in the middle of it, defenseless and apparently asleep, was the baby, legs drawn in under his belly to put his rump in the air. He had his head turned the other way, so Bucky could only see the dark curls of his hair through the scope, but the slight motions of his breathing were clearly visible. He was obviously alive.

He had to be alive. They wouldn't just leave him there. 

But they _had_ left him there. Anyone could have a position in these trees, anyone could be taking aim right now. 

Bucky touched his left hand to the sidearm he carried, wishing for a rifle--but this vantage point was all wrong to defend against snipers taking aim on the house. And he wouldn't need to defend against snipers if they would just _keep the baby inside_ , or if Sam and Steve hadn't up and abandoned him.

Bucky closed his eyes, listening for any betraying sounds to indicate danger nearby. The background sounds of summer insects and daytime birds were undisturbed, except for a shrinking bubble around his own location. Of course, if the sniper had been in place long enough, waiting quietly enough...

But if they wanted to hit the baby they could have done it already. If they wanted to hit Bucky--well, he was hard to take down, and he might as well flush them now and get them away from the baby and Gertie. 

Bucky opened his eyes and straightened up, squaring his shoulders as he broke cover. He walked forward deliberately, his eyes fixed on the baby, for a handful of strides. That was as long as he could resist breaking into a run. 

He stopped short, like he'd hit a wall, when Gertie stepped into view through the back door. It was only the screen door that had been closed; she must have had an ear out for the baby the whole time. 

And an ear out for Bucky, too, because she didn't look the least surprised as she looked him up and down. Bucky looked back, staring at the old woman who had been his baby sister seventy-some years ago, who was a grandmother now. 

"Well, Steve said you would show up, but I didn't think you'd be quite that prompt," Gertie said. Bucky trembled, his eyes prickling and fists clenching at the sound of his baby sister speaking to him again. "Come on, I'll fix you some lunch and we can talk."

"Gert," Bucky said, wanting to back off, wanting to run, wanting nothing more than to sit down at the kitchen table again like no time had passed at all.

She just shook her head. "Come on, Bucky. I ain't got all the time in the world anymore, and I'm not waiting around on you. Stop dallying and come inside where you belong."

Bucky shook his head, but he felt his mouth curling up into a fond smile. 

"All right, all right," he said. His voice sounded strange to him, but he saw recognition strike Gertie. That had been Bucky's voice, then.

He started forward again, but his gaze dropped from Gertie to the baby. Words welled up and caught in his throat, tightening it so that he couldn't draw a full breath: _baby bear, medvezhonok, Papa's here._

Before he knew it he was kneeling down at the edge of the blanket, reaching out with his trembling right hand. He stopped himself just short of touching that silky brown hair, gripped again with the fear of hurting him, of some programming springing out.

Except, he realized abruptly, if the programming were going to take hold it could have done it back in the trees. How many times had he looked at one of his targets through a scope like that? 

He'd killed close before too. The faces and the dying struggles of a dozen victims flooded his mind--but none of them looked like this baby. None of them were babies at all. That was still a blank in his mind, a persistent unknown, just as he still couldn't remember when he had first touched this child, how it had come to be that he felt this insistent pull to be near him, to protect him.

_Maybe the mission was to protect him._ He dismissed the thought as soon as it occurred: HYDRA had not destroyed that base to _protect_ this child, and if they wanted Bucky--the Soldier--to protect him, they would have given those orders unmistakably. They had wanted this child dead, and Bucky must have been a failsafe. 

But his programming wasn't activating. And he couldn't remember actually being briefed. What if it had only been the memory of the other times? What if they hadn't intended Bucky to be there at all? 

Where _was_ he supposed to be? Where were his handlers? What had his missions been, in the months since he pulled Steve out of the Potomac? Bucky had left him there, reconnoitered enough to confirm his own growing suspicions of who he was, and then he'd begun to travel, heading... somewhere. 

And just yesterday, he'd had to remember his own name all over again. He'd had to remember _Steve_ all over again.

Bucky shook his head sharply, pressing both fists to his thighs as he struggled to make it make sense.

The baby snuffled in his sleep and turned his head, showing his face to Bucky. One cheek was flushed red from being pressed to the blanket. Bucky felt a strange bolt of recognition, and something weirder--like caution, like hunger, like the anticipation of pain, all sharp and pure as ice. 

_Tenderness._

He reached out again with his right hand and settled it lightly over the baby's head, brushing his thumb over the flushed-hot curve of the baby's cheek. 

His son. Steve's son. _Baby bear_. 

The baby didn't wake at his touch, and after another moment Bucky leaned forward and scooped him up off the blanket, cradling the baby against his chest. One little hand flailed out and found his left shoulder, patting at the solidity of it through the layered shirts he wore, and then the baby was still again, a limp hot weight in his arms. 

Bucky stood up and found Gertie still watching him through the screen door. There were tears on her face, but she was smiling as she pushed the door open, and Bucky stepped over the threshold, into the welcoming dimness of his sister's kitchen.

* * *

"I know, I know," Steve said, waving off Sam's insistence that Teddy and Gertie would be fine. Sam let it go at that, looking out at the highway as Steve sped them down it just _slightly_ in excess of posted limits. A silence fell, without Teddy crying or babbling or banging on things or breathing in mercifully quiet sleep.

It felt a little bit like Sam had finally gotten a patient to a field hospital. There was always an interval afterward where he felt unbalanced and confused without that weight and the constant demands on his attention. 

It felt a little bit like missing somebody. Sam rubbed his hands over his face. He'd known Teddy for less than two days, although in following-Steve-into-chaos time that was probably about a year. The whole Insight mess had felt like that; Teddy was just as life-altering, but deceptively less full of death and explosions.

Although if they were wrong about Bucky...

"So, uh..." Steve said, and Sam looked over at him, eager to be taken out of that particular set of useless thoughts. "We should--wait, should we wait until we get there to--to talk? I've never really done this."

Sam exhaled, remembering abruptly that he was in this insanity, whatever it was, with _Steve Rogers_ , who was probably Sam's favorite person on earth aside from his mama. For all Steve's skills in, say, defending the earth from aliens or the citizenry from corrupt intelligence agencies, there were a few things Sam had more experience with than Steve did. 

This wasn't really one of them, though.

"Hell if I know," Sam said, tipping his head back with a little laugh. "I mean, I've had breakup talks and a _you wanna get an apartment together next year_ talk with my college girlfriend, but I think we just catapulted to number one with a bullet on my lifetime list of serious relationships, so I guess we do whatever works for us."

Steve swallowed visibly, his jaw working. "I--I want to--" the light up ahead turned yellow and Steve gunned the engine and flew through, which was typical Steve and also probably as much of an end as that sentence was going to get. Sam decided to wait a minute, though, and see if he came up with actual words.

Steve blew out a breath and slowed down. "I've never really done anything _but_ serious," Steve confessed. "Bucky, Peggy, you. That's really all I know how to do, when I--when I care about someone. And I don't know if you've noticed, but I'm no good at _stopping_ being serious about someone once I start."

"It is sort of remarkable how the two people you fell in love with seventy or eighty years ago are still a part of your life to this day," Sam agreed, keeping his voice steady and fighting the damn butterflies in his stomach. 

Steve had just mentioned Bucky and Peggy _and Sam_ , all in the same breath. Steve wasn't winding up to tell him that he was out and Bucky was in. 

"But you're..." Steve said, slowing the car as they approached a turn. "You're actually here. Teddy knows you, and you're... I don't know how to say this without it sounding wrong, but I need somebody in my life who can be a--a partner. Not just an Avenger, but with Teddy, with--I got no idea what I'm doing, Sam. I never--with Bucky, with Peggy--there was never any future in me and Bucky, and me and Peg never got as far as even planning one beyond a date I didn't make. I've got no map here. But I'm Teddy's dad, and I love you, and I need you, and I hope to God you're willing to put up with us for--"

"Pull over," Sam said, eyeing the shoulder of the two lane road.

"What?" Steve looked around for a threat as he did, reaching behind the seat for his shield. "What, is it--"

As soon as they were on the shoulder and at a stop, Sam grabbed Steve by the shoulder and kissed him hard. Steve stayed tense for a second, and then seemed to realize it wasn't a ploy; his arm came around Sam and tugged him closer as Steve kissed back desperately, open-mouthed and hungry.

Sam pulled back when he realized the next step was going to involve clumsy front-seat sex in broad daylight. Steve looked dazed, but then he grinned. "Is that a yes?"

Sam nodded, heroically sucking in a breath so he could say, "Yeah, yeah, of course it--I love you too, Steve. I just--" Sam shut his eyes, forcing himself to actually think. He'd had stuff he was going to say. "We just--we have to--"

He felt Steve's weight shift slightly away from him and opened his eyes, feeling pretty sure that the mood was sufficiently killed so they could actually talk about this. Sure enough, the happy turned on flush was already fading from Steve's cheeks, and his eyes were intent in a tactical way, not like he was measuring the shortest route between him and Sam's dick. 

Sam swallowed. He wasn't going to beat around the bush or sugar coat this. "Steve, you're asking me to be Captain America's white kid's black stepdad." 

Steve winced. "It's not just Teddy, Sam, I--"

Sam shook his head a little. "I know, but Teddy's right in the middle of this. That's the deal here. I get that, and it's not something I won't follow you into, but this is not gonna be easy all the time--and this time you're not gonna be the one drawing the fire. I want to be with you, I want to be a family with you and Teddy, but if we're going to do that, we've gotta be very, very out, Steve. It's gotta be one hundred percent clear to people that I'm with you, or I can't do this. I'm not gonna be Uncle Falcon or something in the papers, I can't--"

Steve leaned in and kissed him again, and Sam leaned into it, knowing that this was an answer, not Steve trying to shut him up. Steve didn't pull back, just leaned his forehead against Sam's. 

"So, uh," Steve laughed a little. "I guess maybe I wasn't clear enough about what I was asking for. I just figured--I mean, you said yourself--"

Sam pulled back enough to look Steve in the eye, and he was grinning in a way that didn't hide the tiny bit of uncertainty in his eyes. 

"I mean, for you to be Teddy's stepdad properly. If we're going to stick with each other for good, I just figured--"

Sam's mouth opened and closed. Somehow that hadn't occurred to him, although it should have. That was how it went when Steve was growing up, right? If you were a single mother in trouble, that was what you did when you found yourself a stand-up guy.

Steve's smile firmed up a little at whatever he saw in Sam's face, and he offered a hand palm up between them. "If you're up for following me anywhere, how about down the aisle?" He wrinkled his nose as soon as he said it, shaking his head before he added earnestly, "I mean--Sam, will you marry me?"


	9. Chapter 9

Sam crowded Steve up against the motel room's door as soon as he locked it, and Steve grinned as he twisted to face him. Sam's hands framed his face as Sam kissed him, and Steve got his hands on Sam's ass, tugging him in tight and grinding them together.

In the little time he'd had to think about it, he'd thought that asking Sam to marry him was asking for a favor, an awkward formality that Sam might endure for his sake. He'd forgotten that a fella might be happy to be asked. He'd forgotten until he was saying the words that Sam saying yes to him meant he got to keep Sam for good, open and honest and true.

They were both hard already. The last few days wasn't the longest they'd gone without each other since starting up together, but it felt like a lifetime had gone by since they were alone. There wasn't really time to savor it now, but Steve still meant to make it worthwhile. 

When he broke his mouth from Sam's it was only to swing them around, pressing Sam to the door for one more quick kiss before Steve dropped to his knees. Sam was already groaning and fumbling open the button of his jeans by the time Steve got there.

"God, yes," Sam's hand slid into Steve's hair, letting Steve tug the zipper down and nuzzle at the hardness of his cock straining against his boxers. "Yeah, go on."

Steve lingered a little longer, breathing in the smell of sex, anticipating the taste and feel of Sam in his mouth. He'd always loved this, got a dark filthy thrill from going to his knees. He'd been a little disappointed, contrarily, to find that it wasn't considered so dirty anymore, and everybody did it nowadays. _Cocksucker_ was more or less as much an insult as it had ever been, though, and Steve felt the same defiant pleasure as always when he brought Sam's cock to his lips.

Sam's fingers tightened in his short hair, and Steve opened wide, in no mood to tease. He took Sam's cock fast and deep, sucking him like they might be caught any second. Sam was gasping above him, cursing brokenly and pounding his free hand against the door as his other hand rode up and down on Steve's head. 

Steve lost himself in the rush of it, the hot breathless intimacy of Sam's cock inside him, drinking down every twitch and every sound Sam made. He kept his hands on Sam's hips, more to hold him up than to hold him still.

Sam was a gentleman, though, and hardly moved at all until he'd just about reached the breaking point, and then he gasped out, "Steve, baby--"

Steve nodded and slid his hands back on Sam's hips, inviting, and Sam groaned. 

"Fucking love you," he gasped, and then he was fucking Steve's mouth in bruising thrusts that had Steve moaning, spit running down his chin as he sucked Sam through it. Sam kept moving as he came, and Steve let his mouth relax as it filled with the bitter taste of his release, swallowing when he could and not minding when he couldn't. 

He gasped in a breath when Sam tugged free of his mouth, inhaling with a dizzy little rush like the first moment in his new body. He looked up at Sam, grinning open-mouthed, and Sam groaned all over again.

"Gonna fuck you so nice the next time we got time," Sam promised, reaching down to grab Steve by the arms. He hauled Steve halfway up to his feet, and Steve let himself enjoy the ride, the strength of Sam who was always, always there to catch him. 

Sam only moved him enough to push him back onto the bed, and Steve laughed a little as he hit the mattress and bounced. Sam followed him down and got his pants open in a few quick movements. Steve sucked in a hard breath as Sam's hand closed around him, and Sam grinned widely. "You that close, baby? Just from having my cock in your mouth?"

Steve groaned and curled over, trying to catch Sam's mouth in a kiss before he could make this more embarrassingly fast than it was already destined to be. 

"And now I get to lock this down, huh," Sam let his lips just brush against Steve's, enough for him to feel the tingle of hard use and the tantalizing closeness as Sam worked his cock in fast, tight strokes. "You're gonna be my very--own--legally committed--All-American champion cocksucker."

Steve squeezed his eyes shut and groaned as he came in Sam's grip, letting Sam stroke him through it until he had to make a little _no, stop_ noise at the oversensitivity. 

Sam stopped on a dime and touched his sticky fingers to Steve's lips. Steve kept his eyes closed as he licked them clean, waiting for the flaming flush to subside from his face. Sam's fingers brushed gently over his cheek, and Steve started to relax into it, forgetting about keeping his eyes closed and settling into lying still with Sam. His mouth curled up as Sam's words echoed in his head, obscene and sincere; this wasn't just a stolen moment now. This was going to be their life together.

"You know I, uh..." Steve's eyes snapped open and he found Sam looking uncharacteristically sheepish. "I didn't mean..."

Sam wasn't the one who usually felt the need to explain stuff he said during sex, and for the life of him Steve couldn't figure out what Sam had just said that wasn't pure and simple fact, as of the last hour. "What?"

Sam winced and then sat up, leaning forward to put his elbows on his knees. Steve pushed up onto his elbows, but no further, looking up at the curve of Sam's deliberately-turned back. From this angle he looked fully dressed; Sam didn't even have the problem of his hair getting mussed or a sex-flush showing on his skin unless the light was good and you knew just where to look. Steve glanced down his own body, his dick hanging out of his pants and his rucked-up shirt spattered with come. 

"Sam?" Steve said, tugging up his underwear. "What the hell didn't you mean?"

Sam looked over his shoulder, then sighed and stretched out beside him again, shaking his head a little. He leaned in and kissed Steve, a quick businesslike peck on the lips that made Steve's heart skip unreasonably. It was the way he'd seen married people kiss on parting or meeting, something almost but not quite taken for granted. Something sure.

"Sorry, I didn't know I needed to say it until I was saying it," Sam explained. "And--I'm still getting my head around it, but... you know one reason I was never sure where you and me were going is Bucky. You and Bucky."

Steve flinched, dropping his gaze. "I wouldn't--Sam--"

"You said yourself," Sam said quietly, tapping his knuckles against Steve's chest. "You don't stop loving people. You sure as hell ain't gonna stop loving Bucky, and he's Teddy's Pop, so it's not like he's not gonna be a part of our lives, either. This isn't gonna be you going to visit him a few days a week when you're in town, man."

Steve rapidly assimilated the tactical picture--what Sam had said, and the way he said it while still stretched out with him on the bed where they'd just had sex. "You're--Sam, how can you be all right with that?"

Sam snorted. "That's where you draw the line? You think _that's_ the big ask here, not asking you to sneak around and pretend you're not still in love with this guy? All the stuff you've--"

Steve could see which way the wind was blowing. He pushed into another kiss, pressing Sam down into the bed with it and trying to put everything he felt into every brush of his lips and tongue against Sam's. 

Just in case it hadn't all come through clearly, he lifted his head and said softly. "Sam--thank you. Thank you. I'm so lucky I met you, and if you ever think I'm forgetting that--"

"Oh, you'll hear about it," Sam assured him, sounding slightly breathless and not quite as unimpressed as he probably meant to be, but it made Steve feel warm all over again, knowing that Sam was as little impressed with his legend as Peggy and Bucky had ever been, as much prepared to hold him to being a good man, rather than just a pretty icon. 

"I'm giving you a pass on Bucky, not on treating me like shit. But if you wanna get married somewhere _other_ than my folks' church with a hundred reporters watching to analyze why you didn't say _forsaking all others_ \--"

"I could still," Steve started. 

Sam shook his head firmly, cutting him off. "No. No. Even if we both know what it means, you're not lying to me in front of God or anyone else. You're not saying that. And we're not doing some circus of a wedding back in New York."

"Well," Steve admitted. "I was thinking more like the justice of the peace the day after tomorrow, so we can be a married couple by the time we're trying to get Teddy a birth certificate."

Sam exhaled and kissed him again, shaking his head. "See? It's like I know you a little bit."

"God, and you agreed to marry me anyway," Steve muttered, smiling, letting himself believe that that had really happened, was really going to happen. "What the hell are you thinking?"

"I expect to be asking myself that for a long damn time," Sam murmured, smiling back just as wide. 

Steve knew they ought to be packing, washing up, getting back to Gertie and Teddy--getting back to _Bucky_ , if their hunch was right--but he just had to kiss Sam one more time first.

* * *

The baby had gotten somehow heavier and more limp the longer he slept. By the time Bucky had eaten enough lunch to satisfy Gertie, the baby was curled up on Bucky's thighs, head pressed against the crook of Bucky's metal elbow, two pudgy bare feet dangling off Bucky's knees.

Gertie gave him and the baby an approving look as she returned from another room with a stack of binders. Bucky had a flash of briefing books, surveillance photos, dossiers, but when Gertie flipped back the first cover he discovered a grid of home snapshots mounted on heavy black paper. _Photo albums_.

"You've got some catching up to do," Gertie announced. "You've got a whole passel of nieces and nephews and grand-nieces and grand-nephews, and they're all Teddy's family, too."

"Teddy?" Bucky replied, looking down at the baby. The implication was obvious, but he hadn't heard the baby's name before.

Gertie huffed. "Did Steve not tell you the name he's planning to land on that poor child? Theodore Franklin Barnes-Rogers, he said."

"Teddy," Bucky repeated, though something tickled at his brain and told him _Theodore_ and _Franklin_ belonged beside each other somehow, the way _Barnes_ and _Rogers_ did. "Teddy. Like... a little bear."

Gertie said nothing.

Bucky looked up at her and then down at the baby, _Teddy_ , _medvezhonok_ , _baby bear_...

"I knew," Bucky said, running a hand through his hair and then tugging at it, as though he could make a memory surface somehow. "How could I know that? But I called him _little bear_ as soon as I saw him. I always..."

But his throat closed up on the words. He couldn't say he'd always done _anything_. He didn't remember this child, had never seen him before yesterday as far as he knew--except that he did know it, just like he knew lots of things he couldn't remember properly. _Theodore_ and _Franklin_ were the names of presidents. Like _Buchanan_. Like _Grant_. 

"Oughta be just Rogers," Bucky muttered, staring down at the child, who kept _sleeping_ , like he somehow knew he was safe. "Shouldn't go putting a dead man's name on a baby."

He saw the blow coming, flinched but held still for it anyway--except that Gertie's hand, when it flashed out, went low. She only chucked him under the chin with one liver-spotted knuckle. He obeyed the implicit command and met her eyes.

Gertie's hand remained extended. She touched her thumb to his chin, then cupped his cheek. "You feel plenty alive to me, Bucky. I know there's bound to be a mess of paperwork and all sorts of folks getting all worked up before you can get a driver's license or your VA benefits, but that doesn't mean a thing to me, or to Steve either. Or to Teddy. You're here, that's what matters."

He should have said, _I won't be for long, I can't stay_. He should have told her he only came in to protect Teddy. He hadn't even known Teddy's _name_ until a moment ago; how could she imagine that he could be the sort of person who deserved to have a child bearing his name? 

But he was caught between the limp weight of Teddy in his lap and the bird-boned touch of her hand, and he said nothing. He might have stayed frozen there forever, but he jerked away from Gertie at the faint sound of footsteps on the front porch, a second before someone rang the bell. 

"Bucky," Gertie said, very low, and he realized that he had stood, and that he had his hand on his gun. His sudden move had startled his sister, who was old, and maybe frail, and should be protected from shocks.

He had to protect her, and he had to protect Teddy. 

"I didn't hear a car," he murmured. "And you don't live within casual walking distance of your neighbors. Are you expecting anyone?"

Gertie's lips tightened, and she shook her head. Bucky motioned for her to follow him and moved silently to the deep old-fashioned pantry. There was a wooden potato bin just inside, no longer needed for its original purpose; it now stored folded tablecloths and napkins. 

Bucky jerked his chin at it and Gertie opened it, watching with an unhappy expression as he lowered Teddy inside. The boy whimpered in his sleep but didn't wake, and Bucky lowered the wooden door over him. 

"You," Bucky murmured, and Gertie shook her head decidedly. 

"I'll answer my own door," she murmured back. "They--" the doorbell sounded again. "They're ringing the bell, not breaking in through the windows. Could be Mormons on bicycles for all you know."

"Just one," Bucky pointed out, but he didn't argue with Gertie, already calculating. Her unalarming appearance at the door could give him an extra few seconds to gauge the threat; she was right that they weren't likely to come in guns blazing--unless they saw him right away.

Gertie nodded and turned away, leading the way from the kitchen down the hall toward the front door. Bucky hung back, pressed to the right-hand wall, where the opening door would give him an extra half-second's cover. 

He didn't even need all of a half-second. As soon as Gertie opened the door a few inches he saw a startled recognition go over her, and the woman standing outside said, "Hello, I'm--"

_Threat_. Bucky lunged forward, yanking the door open wide so that he could interpose himself without knocking Gertie down. He shoved the screen door open instead of going right through it, but the Widow on the other side was already falling back, trying to choose her spot. 

Bucky didn't give her the chance, grabbing for her before she could go far. He wouldn't kill her in front of Gertie, but he could not let her--a _Widow_ , trained from _infancy_ \--get her hands on his son, Steve's son. What would a woman like that make of their baby?

The Widow went oddly, abruptly limp as his hands went out. He jerked his own hands back, letting her fall without dragging him down, and she went to her knees, spreading her hands wide. 

Bucky rocked back a half-step, staring down at her while she looked up at him. Her eyes were wide, a pretty pale green, and her brows were drawn down in what looked like calculation. What more could she need to calculate?

A small, light impact on his hip made Bucky jerk, half-turning his head so that he didn't quite take his eyes off the Widow. Gertie pointed at him with the wooden spoon she'd obviously just used to smack him. 

"Knock that off, you," Gertie said sternly. "That's Natasha Romanov, she's a friend of Steve and Sam's. She's saved the world at least three times in the last two years, and that's just what's made the news."

"To be fair," Natasha said, drawing Bucky's undivided attention back to herself. "The world-saving is usually a team effort. Steve and Sam do their share."

Bucky shook his head, trying to ward off the rush of memory, but it arrived in a jumble of urgent images that he didn't have time to sort through. A target, a rifle in his hands, a body dropping; a red-haired child, barely hip-high, taking a wicked knife from his hands; a... a woman--this woman--bloodied and bruised and holding a great golden spear--

"I think I saw," Bucky said haltingly. "The news. I saw you."

"Yeah?" Natasha still didn't move, just shook her head a little to make the straight red strands shift over her shoulders. "Was I doing something cool?"

When had he seen that? Where, how? Why couldn't he remember? "Stabbing something. Blue light, a pillar into the sky."

"One of my finer moments," Natasha agreed solemnly. "Aliens invaded New York, and I closed the portal that was letting them through."

A dark enclosed room, screens, and a man in an expensive suit talking calmly about contingencies, containment, fallback positions, _I'm confident of my own security measures, and I think it's best if members of the presidential succession are spread out right now._ And Bucky had been standing behind him, awaiting orders, watching the action on the screens, until he was taken away again, put away like a weapon that hadn't needed to be fired after all.

Because she had done the job. She had saved the world.

"No aliens here," Bucky informed her. There were more memories, but he couldn't spare a second's attention to sort them out--she had been so _small_ , why did he remember her being so small? "And Sam and Steve aren't, either."

"But they were until a little while ago," Natasha agreed. "I was worried about what brought them out here. They've been keeping secrets from me. I don't know why, because I'm the one who gave Steve his first leads on you."

Bucky frowned, looking down at her. Steve and Sam had been actively hiding Teddy from her, but they worked with her. She had been helping Steve try to find... _Bucky?_

Why _hadn't_ Steve found him? Where had Bucky been? Who had been keeping him, and where, since the helicarriers and HYDRA and Pierce all went to hell? _Why couldn't he remember?_

He shook his head again, slower this time, trying to work out how to combat that glint of interest and calculation in Natasha's eyes. She knew there was something else to find here and she wasn't going to let go, but Steve and Sam hadn't wanted her to find Teddy either. Even if she was on their side--his side?--he didn't know if he could trust her with--

Teddy let out a sudden wail, only barely muffled by wood and walls and doors. Bucky struggled to keep his focus on Natasha; he could see that she had heard, but she didn't take her eyes off of him.

She already knew the baby was there; she would put together who he belonged to quickly enough. If she tried to take or hurt Teddy he would know that he had to kill her, friend of Steve's or not. 

Bucky stole a glance back at Gertie, who was watching him with a look that very clearly conveyed that it had been _his_ idea to stick the baby in the potato bin and now it was _his_ responsibility to deal with the baby being upset about waking up in a potato bin. 

Bucky gave her a little nod, glanced down at Natasha, and said, "This is a different secret."

Then he turned his back to her. His memories threw out a dozen images at once, and he expected to feel her weight hit his shoulders, her legs and a garrote wrapped around his neck. None of that happened, so he walked down the hall to the kitchen, and into the pantry, where he was met with the sight of Teddy standing up in the potato bin, having pushed the lid up with his head. 

His cries turned to startled silence, and then an enormous smile, as Bucky stepped into view. "Wee-oo!"

"Hello to you too, baby bear," Bucky murmured, reaching in and shoving the lid aside with his arm as he hoisted Teddy out. 

Teddy immediately grabbed the collar of his shirt with his left hand, smacking at his metal shoulder with his right as he crowed triumphantly. "Wee-oo! Wee-oo!" 

"Yeah, I heard you," Bucky said, bouncing Teddy gently to get his attention. "Papa's here, little bear. _Papa_. Can you say Papa?"

"Bah?" Teddy echoed uncertainly. 

"Sure, good enough." Bucky pulled Teddy a little closer with one hand behind his neck and head, pressing a kiss to his silky dark hair. He stepped out of the pantry to find Natasha sitting at the kitchen table with a glass of iced tea. She was feigning cool indifference, but her gaze was sharp as Bucky stepped into view with Teddy.

He had to find out what she would do. This wasn't something he could play out like a spider's game; Teddy was right here, the Widow was right here, and Bucky had to know what was going to happen. He went and sat down across from Natasha, automatically pushing all the photo albums out of Teddy's reach. 

But Teddy didn't reach for the enticing objects. He plastered himself tight against Bucky's chest, hiding his face from Natasha and whimpering. 

_Yeah, I don't trust her either, little bear_. 

"So," Natasha said, tilting her head. "That's... new."

"He's not a _that_ ," Bucky said evenly. "His name is Teddy."

"And you're Teddy's Papa, which is a situation taking the pronoun _that_ ," Natasha replied, in the same elaborately easy tone. "Which is new. Teddy looks... what, about a year old?"

Bucky frowned slightly, searching himself for any hint, any faint intuition, but there was nothing. Teddy just _was_ : his, and Steve's, and in need of protection, world without end, amen.

"I don't know," Bucky said tightly. "I don't remember his birthday."

He wasn't entirely certain of _today's date_ , if it came to that. All he could summon up was a mental image of a calendar in the safehouse. July. It was hot enough for July, but the garden was too far along.

How did he know how old the tomato plants were but not how old the baby was?

"If we don't know his birthday we'll have to choose one for him," Gertie put in, drawing Bucky's attention. "First birthday's important, he ought to have a party."

The idea of it was oddly terrifying. He was barely equipped to keep Teddy physically safe--how could he give him things like _parties_? Birthdays? But no, that wouldn't be his responsibility; he was only here to keep Teddy safe until Steve came back.

"Steve can do the party," Bucky decided. "Steve and Sam."

Bucky would stay outside, watching. That would be safer, wouldn't it? 

Unless the dangers were already inside, of course. Bucky glanced at Natasha again, but she was studying Teddy with a strange expression on her face, and she said, "He should definitely have parties. Birthdays. Children have birthdays." 

She looked up, meeting Bucky's eyes, and he thought of her small again--he had known her, hadn't he, when she was small--but not a child. He didn't think she had ever been a child who had a birthday. 

He held Teddy tighter. 

Natasha's head tilted slightly. "Definitely his papa," she said quietly. "So where does Steve fit in? And Sam?"

Bucky watched her. "You don't know?"

"I'm asking you," Natasha said, staring right back. "You seem pretty attached to Teddy, but I didn't see you toting him around in an armored sling back in DC. I know Steve and Sam are in this somehow, and in deep. But I don't know what you think of that, or what you think of them together, or--"

A car on the road slowed as it approached; he saw Natasha hear it at the same instant he did. It was almost certainly Steve and Sam returning, but it could be more Avengers, or whoever Steve had rescued Teddy from.

"Lord, you're worse than cats in tornado season," Gertie said. "Is somebody else coming? Do we have to go hide in the cellar this time?"

The car pulled into the driveway. It _sounded_ like the same rental car Steve and Sam had been driving earlier, but Bucky continued listening intently until it shut off and he heard Steve laughing in the absence of the engine noise.

It wasn't a laugh Steve would be any good at faking. Steve could lie, and act, better than most people thought he could, but Bucky knew that laugh; he _felt_ it in his chest. That was real. Steve was safe. They were all safe. 

He looked down at Teddy and muttered, "Hey, baby bear, Daddy's home."

Natasha didn't make a sound, but her posture shifted enough to draw Bucky's attention, and he had the brief pleasure of seeing her look shocked and wrong-footed. She hadn't known Teddy was also Steve's, and now she was going to have to face Steve and Sam. She hadn't meant to confront them directly, and now she was caught.

Of course, if he didn't drop Teddy and run right now, Bucky had to face them too. 

Gertie shook her head at them both and went to answer the door at the sound of loud, unguarded footsteps on the porch.


	10. Chapter 10

Sam was right behind Steve coming in to Gertie's house, his own duffle on his shoulder and a half-dozen shopping bags of Teddy's stuff dangling from his hands. The momentum of all the stuff meant he couldn't stop quite as fast as he needed to when Steve froze just inside, so he ended up plastered up against his supersoldier fiancé ( _fiancé!_ ) and staring at the spectacle in Gertie's kitchen. 

Bucky was there, as they had hoped he might be, but he was holding Teddy and looking like he wanted to run. That was probably because Natasha was standing on the other side of Gertie's kitchen table and looking like...

Sam honestly could not put words to Natasha's expression, but it was one he'd never seen before.

"Natasha," Steve said, sounding mostly calm with just a hint of Captain America Controlling the Situation. "Something urgent going on? You couldn't call me about it?"

Natasha's expression relaxed slightly, and she took a couple of casual-looking steps away from Bucky, which prompted Steve to move further inside. Sam followed him, because there wasn't any point in breaking that habit now. 

"Sorry," Natasha said. "I didn't mean to intrude, but I knew you were keeping secrets from me, and I thought you might need backup."

Natasha's steady gaze and not-entirely-at-ease posture added the _I still think you might_ loud and clear. 

"Just visiting family," Steve replied, and actually unbent to set down the stuff he was carrying and turn to help Sam with his load. Sam, handing off the bags, turned his attention to Bucky and Teddy. 

Teddy was snuggled in tight against Bucky's chest. Bucky was trying to split his attention between the baby and every person in the room who might be a threat, which was all of them except probably Gertie, who was currently transferring the contents of the Styrofoam cooler to her fridge.

Sam rummaged through the bags Steve had set on the counter and grabbed the box of Cheerios before he turned toward them again. Bucky had shifted into a slightly more defensible position while Steve continued exchanging intensely guarded small talk with Natasha. Sam walked up to the kitchen table like nothing much was happening and opened the box of cereal, pouring out a handful of Cheerios into his cupped left hand. 

Everyone else in the room went silent. Sam turned his head, looking only at Teddy. 

"Hey, Teddy, want some Cheerios?"

Teddy twisted away from Bucky immediately, both hands out. "Sah! Sah-Sah!"

Sam felt his heart and most of his internal organs turn to mush, but he managed to curl his fingers and draw his hand back slightly. "Manners, Teddy, what do you say?"

Teddy stared at him for a moment, looking back and forth from Sam's face to the handful of Cheerios. Then he put his hand to his chest and circled it, signing _please_ , as he said, "Sah-Sah?"

"That works," Sam agreed, stepping closer. He glanced in Bucky's direction, but Bucky had stopped watching him, implicit permission to move in. Sam closed the distance, bringing his handful of Cheerios well within Teddy's reach, using his body to block Teddy from Natasha. 

Teddy grabbed a fistful of Cheerios and attempted to cram them all into his mouth at once, and Sam smiled and glanced up again. He met Bucky's eyes, and before Bucky flinched and dropped his gaze, Sam caught a reflection of his own feeling of fond amusement at Teddy's efforts to feed himself.

_There you are_ , Sam thought. That was Teddy's Pop. That was the guy Steve was never going to quit being in love with. 

"So," Natasha said behind him. "I hear the question of planning Teddy's first birthday party is still up in the air, Rogers. When is the big day, exactly?"

Sam glanced over his shoulder at Natasha, then at Steve, and Steve's brief smile told Sam that Steve had heard the same other meaning in _big day_. No knowing if Natasha had an inkling of that. 

Then Teddy's hand smacked down against the pile of Cheerios in his palm and Sam brought his other hand up to cup the cereal more securely at the same time Bucky said something low and firm in Russian. 

Teddy went still and looked up at Bucky, then at Sam, then back to Bucky. 

"Gently," Bucky repeated in the same tone. "Gently, baby bear."

Teddy plucked a single Cheerio out of Sam's hands and held it up against Bucky's lips. Bucky blinked at him--darted a glance at Sam, who was trying desperately not to either grin or cry--and then parted his lips and accepted the offering.

"Steve?" Natasha prompted.

"Uh," Steve said, in a caught-out tone that told Sam that Steve had been staring at him and Bucky and Teddy. "Oh. I don't know, actually. Sam? Did you see anything in the files?"

Teddy picked up another Cheerio and offered it to Sam, and Sam lipped it off his fingers just to get the unbearably adorable moment over with before he looked back at Steve. "Nothing obvious, but I still haven't gone through most of them, and I wasn't looking for dates so much."

Steve nodded and returned his attention to Natasha. "We have some files--someone at the facility taped a data chip to Teddy's pajamas--but, well. We've been pretty distracted."

Bucky made a small movement that drew Sam's attention back to him, and his posture made Sam remember Bucky saying _take him_. Teddy, perched in Bucky's arms, grabbed some more Cheerios, contentedly oblivious, and Sam's hands were full of cereal, so he couldn't do a damn thing right now.

"Buck," Steve said. Bucky's head jerked up, and there was something terrible in his eyes, cut to the bone and holding still for more. Sam couldn't look away from him, could hardly breathe. 

"What Sam told you before, from the files--about Teddy not being the first try. The others didn't make it on their own. They died of natural causes, probably stillborn or miscarried."

Bucky blinked, his forehead creasing before he ducked his head again, shaking his head a little to make his hair fall down and shield his face. Teddy looked up at him and then at Sam as he grabbed another fistful of Cheerios. He held his chubby little hand up to Bucky's lips. 

"Bah?"

Bucky exhaled sharply, then said softly, "Sure, baby bear." He accepted a few damp Cheerios crammed into his mouth, and Teddy drew his hand back and shoved whatever was left into his own mouth. 

Bucky raised his eyes to Sam, meeting his eyes directly, intentionally, for what might have been the first time. "Is that true? About the files?"

Sam nodded. "I should have said it differently. I didn't mean for you to believe there were other babies like Teddy. It was nothing you did."

Bucky looked down at Teddy again and said, so softly that maybe no one but Sam could hear it, "But I was _there_. I _know_..."

"You don't remember?" Natasha prodded. "Barnes?"

Bucky glanced up at her, at Steve, and back down at Teddy while Sam just kept watching his face. He shook his head. "Nothing about--where he was. I got there after the place was blown up, and I knew how to find it, but I still don't know why."

"But you know us," Steve put in. "And Teddy knows you. You've remembered other things, haven't you, Buck?"

Bucky nodded, without picking his head up. Teddy squirmed against his chest and snagged more Cheerios. "Brooklyn. The orphanage. Summers here. But not the last few months."

That wasn't exactly a yes or a no on whether he remembered what he and Steve had been to each other before, among other things. 

"Whatever files you have," Natasha said. "We should be mining that information. If you'll let me look, I can see what else there is to find."

Sam glanced back at Natasha and Steve; both of them were watching Bucky, waiting for his verdict. 

It took another several seconds for Bucky to realize the same thing. He gave a tiny nod. "There might be more records at the safehouse. I could go search there."

"Safehouse?" Natasha frowned. "Here?"

Bucky blinked, shrugged, nodded. "Stocked, secure. There's a safe room, transmission blocking." 

That was where he'd been staying--where he had taken Steve's helmet tracker to make it disappear. 

Natasha frowned harder. "I want to--"

"No," Bucky said sharply. "You have to stay here. Check the files."

Natasha seemed to remember how precarious this peace was; she backed down quickly, raising her hands. "You're right. Yes. I'll stay here." 

Bucky looked down at Teddy, then at Sam, then Steve. Sam could see him realizing that he had to choose between leaving Natasha with Teddy and letting her see the safehouse. 

"I'll stay here with Nat," Steve said gently. "Teddy won't get too upset without you if it's not for long."

Bucky adjusted his grip on Teddy, and his gaze fell on Sam for a long couple of seconds before darting back to Steve. He frowned slightly, looking back and forth between them again, and Sam didn't move, and definitely did not check himself for obvious signs of having gotten his dick sucked in a motel room less than an hour ago. Bucky's gaze settled on Sam, holding his eyes until Teddy moved between them, babbling a bunch of baby nonsense.

Sam looked down then, and really saw for the first time how close they were standing, how Teddy almost filled the space between them. He jerked his gaze back up to meet Bucky's, and Bucky's mouth twitched up at one corner, his assessing look turning almost sympathetic.

Then Bucky nodded sharply and stepped around Sam, handing Teddy off decisively to Steve as he said, "Sam, you come with me to search the safehouse."

Sam met Steve's eyes as Steve held on to Teddy, who was leaning after Bucky and shrieking. Bucky was headed straight out the door, obviously expecting Sam to follow him. Steve was looking a little wild-eyed, like he had as many thoughts as Sam did about all the ways this might be really, really unpleasant.

Sam stepped in and kissed him, dumping the rest of the Cheerios into the crook of his arm to distract Teddy. "Come look for us if we're not back by nightfall."

Steve grimaced and looked toward the front door--Bucky was standing on the threshold, waiting for Sam. So he had definitely seen that, then. "Buck..."

"Can it, Rogers, you already volunteered to stay with the baby. Come on, Wilson, daylight's wasting."

Steve's eyes widened, lips parting, like he was recognizing Bucky for the first time all over again, and Sam gave up on stalling. This might be excruciating, but Bucky wasn't actually going to kill him.

Probably.

* * *

Bucky felt as if his mind had been given a short, sharp jolt of electricity. It wasn't anything like the overwhelming blaze of reconditioning, just enough to yank everything into a fresh alignment. 

Steve and Sam.

Steve and _Bucky_. 

They would never have dared to kiss where they could be seen by Bucky's sister or a coworker of Steve's, which he supposed was what Natasha amounted to, leaving everything else aside. But it was--had been--the same, a long time ago, when he was someone different, not legally dead with a brain full of blank spaces. When he had been Steve's friend, like Steve told him back on the helicarrier--not just a friend, but someone Steve would die for. Someone Steve shared promises with. _To the end of the line._

Bucky glanced over at Sam, who was sitting very still in the passenger seat of the truck as Bucky drove them back to the safehouse. Did Sam know what Bucky and Steve had been to each other? 

That question answered itself as soon as it occurred: Steve wouldn't lie, and wouldn't have any reason to lie to Sam, of all people. He wouldn't have brought Sam into this blind. He'd probably have found some way to break it to Bucky gently about him and Sam, if Bucky weren't the way he was now, as much machine or animal as human. 

Bucky certainly couldn't fault Steve's choice of fellas to move on with. Sam was every bit as good-looking as Steve, a dark contrast to Steve's golden beauty. _Chiaroscuro_.

Bucky shook off the wisp of memory that came trailing after that word--Steve burbling happily about his classes while he made Bucky help him rearrange lamps and flashlights to get the light-and-shadow effect he wanted on something he was drawing. Bucky had laughed and kissed him when they finally got it right, and Steve had just about stabbed him with a pencil when they jostled something out of place in the process. 

"Does Steve draw anymore?" Bucky asked, and Sam jerked a little as he turned to look at Bucky. 

"He's... been pretty busy," Sam said cautiously, and then, unbending a little, he added, "Saving the world, fighting HYDRA, chasing after you. We didn't even get to _sleep_ after our last mission before we came running out here."

"Yeah, yeah, he used to work three jobs in between gettin' sick with every damn thing that came through the neighborhood," Bucky said. Something in him knew how to make the words sound right, and he followed the impulse like walking on a narrow ledge, keeping his forward momentum up so he wouldn't look down. "Always saying _who needs sleep when there's art_? And he can quit chasing me now, he'll have some time free."

Sam snorted. "Pretty sure Teddy's gonna be eating up plenty of free time. People don't usually pick up a new hobby right after they become parents. Maybe in another twenty years when the nest empties out, though."

Bucky frowned. There was something about that that didn't sound right. Steve was a father now, but fathers weren't the same as mothers, forever busy tending to the kids. Unless that was the way it worked when two fellas... But even so, Steve shouldn't be the one staying home to kiss skinned knees and put Teddy to bed at night.

Not that Sam should, either, exactly. But he clearly thought Steve wasn't going to have time for drawing anytime soon, and Teddy would need someone. They would need someone else, to look after the baby properly...

Bucky pushed away the unformed thought. He was the outer perimeter; he shouldn't be contributing even a paycheck and the odd bit of attention to Teddy's upbringing. Except that it felt so right to have Teddy in his arms, asleep on his chest. 

But he knew that wasn't safe. Even if it was true that Bucky hadn't killed the other babies, his memories of Teddy were still missing for no reason anyone could identify; even with all the holes he had in his brain, Bucky knew the reason wasn't going to work out to be anything good. And instead of all the memories he was missing, he had a brain full of programming kicking around that might tell him to do anything. 

Teddy belonged with Sam and Steve just like Sam and Steve belonged together. Bucky belonged way the hell out of the picture, where he couldn't hurt anyone who didn't deserve it.

"Did he draw during the war?" Sam asked. "He never really talks about it, or why he gave it up. You're right, he does need some kind of hobby."

Bucky frowned at the road, sifting for memories.

The one he got--a rumpled hotel bed, the smell of cigarettes and sex and Steve maddeningly refusing to _put down that sketchbook and come over here_ \--was not entirely helpful. 

Bucky's throat felt tight with his former self's lurking sadness. He'd known, even then, that it couldn't last. He hadn't wanted to watch Steve draw the moment because drawing it was Steve's way of holding on, protecting something against loss. Bucky had known even then that it couldn't last, that he already didn't deserve to keep Steve. 

Even then he'd had thoughts of Steve going on to be a father while Bucky faded out to the edges of things. Peggy had been there; it was obvious how things would go once Steve didn't have the war keeping him at Bucky's side instead of hers.

"Yeah," Bucky said, when he realized Sam was still waiting for him to answer. "He--when he had a chance, sometimes. Yeah. He, uh. He drew me, I remember. Somebody probably burned that sketchbook."

Sam made a noise that Bucky categorized, after a few seconds wracking his brain, as _indignant_. Bucky glanced over at him. 

"Look," Sam said. "I know you two were together back then, and I think it's shitty that you had to hide like you did." Sam shook his head, gesturing between himself and Bucky. "We can be as awkward as we want about how things are now, but I gotta tell you that much straight out. That was some old-time bullshit, that he couldn't even keep his drawings of you."

Bucky dragged his gaze away from Sam and watched the road. All he could think, for a moment, was that Sam was a solid match for Steve in the _righteous anger_ department.

Which meant they could both probably use someone to try to make them see sense once in a while, or at least think strategically... but they were superheroes, on a whole team of superheroes. And Bucky was certainly in no better position to tell anybody to be sensible than he was to spend his days cooking and cleaning and minding a baby.

But Sam was talking about him and Steve, about how things used to be, so Bucky said, "Uh. Thanks."

"I know Steve's not gonna push you, and I get that this might not be your top priority right now," Sam went on. "But I'm not going to stand in the way of you two now. You've got a second chance--I don't want either of you missing out on that."

Bucky glanced rapidly back and forth from Sam to the road. "You-- _what_?"

"I mean, I'm not going anywhere, either," Sam said quickly. "Me and Steve, we're--we're in this for the long haul. But if you and him have a thing too, that's fine with me. We can be adults about it, I'm not gonna pretend he's not still crazy about you."

Bucky felt utterly lost for a second--there was some odd echo in his ear, something else behind Sam's words. 

He snorted when he caught it. Peggy's voice. _We're all three of us adults, Barnes, or at least we're supposed to be._ Steve liked 'em dark-eyed and terrifyingly cool under fire, didn't he?

He shook his head, the answer coming easily to him now that he knew he'd said it once before. "Thanks, but no. Steve isn't the kind to have a dirty secret, no matter how understanding you mean to be about it. Especially not with a kid in the picture--something would happen, Teddy would be bound to see me--"

"He's gonna see a _lot_ of you, man. You're his pop, don't go thinking you're getting out of _that_. No way Steve and I can handle that kid on our own."

Bucky shook his head sharply. "I can't."

"Yeah, except you can. You have. _Teddy_ knows you're his pop, and there's only one way he figured that out, man. Kid hates strangers, but he knows you, and I'm betting you've got a real solid track record of taking good care of him, even if you don't remember it. He misses you when you're not around. He _asks_ for you."

Most of that was nothing Bucky hadn't observed himself, but hearing Sam say it made Bucky feel like an exposed wire, sparking off and looking for the nearest contact to ground himself. 

He felt his face shaping into a forbidding scowl. Sam kept quiet while Bucky made a left turn, then a right, then pulled in at a long gravel driveway. When Bucky finally did speak, it was nothing but the obvious. "We're here."

* * *

Steve focused intently on cuddling Teddy and feeding him Cheerios, then fixing him a cup of milk. He wasn't avoiding Natasha's knowing gaze over the laptop she'd set up at Gertie's kitchen table, he was just... busy. 

"Do you have any idea what you're doing?" 

Steve looked up at that, stung--Teddy was resting quietly against his shoulder, drinking his milk thirstily, so he was doing all right, actually--and realized a fraction of a second too late that that had been a really obvious lure. 

Natasha's expression softened a little, though, and she shook her head and looked down. "Not that, you seem to have an unsuspected knack for child care. I meant... everything else, beyond that. When a mission comes up. When he goes to kindergarten."

_I'm going to marry Sam_ seemed like a woefully inadequate plan, in the face of questions like that. 

Steve walked over and sat down on the opposite side of the table from Natasha, shifting Teddy to sit in his lap. Teddy promptly stood up on his thigh to snuggle into the same spot against Steve's shoulder, clutching Steve's shirt to anchor himself.

Steve tilted his cheek against the top of Teddy's head, rubbing one hand over his back, and said, "It's not a knack, it's desperate adaptation to adverse circumstances."

Natasha didn't look up at all then. "Adverse circumstances meaning parenthood."

"Adverse circumstances meaning Teddy spent the first year of his life a captive of HYDRA scientists and I never knew he existed until I pulled him out of their nursery lab, and anyone who knows better than I do how to take care of him is dead, on the run, or..."

Steve trailed off, unsure how to sum up Bucky. 

"Or," Natasha agreed, as if that one word were enough. 

"Yes." What else could he say?

Steve waited for her to press him about Bucky, or to tell him that he had to keep Bucky away from Teddy, but she said instead, "If you need a nanny vetted, you can rest assured that you will be unable to prevent us from doing so with a thoroughness actual intelligence agencies only wish they could achieve."

Steve opened his mouth to object, and shut it again. Natasha was right, of course; she would only be the beginning. Between Tony, Wanda, and Vision...

"Oh, God," he muttered. And the vetting from the Avengers was to say nothing of _Bucky_ , who wasn't likely to stop taking an interest in Teddy's security anytime soon. "I really can't do that to some nice lady."

"A nice man, then," Natasha suggested dryly, just as Teddy flung his sippy cup away over Steve's shoulder. Steve twisted to see where it had landed and Teddy lunged after it, already whining and ramping up to an all-out cry. 

"You're the one who threw it away," Steve pointed out, jouncing him a little as he stood up and went to get the cup. It hadn't spilled, at least. He picked it up and offered it to Teddy, and he batted at it, shoving his face against Steve's shoulder and wriggling. 

Steve cast a hopeless look toward the stairs--Gertie had said she needed a little rest after all the day's excitement--and then back down at Teddy. He didn't like the thought of a nanny raising his son, even one vetted by everyone he knew--if anyone could actually survive that scrutiny--but who else could do it? He couldn't exactly quit his job, and neither could Sam. And at least a nanny would know how to care for a baby the right way, what to feed him and what it meant when he cried.

Except that he hated strangers. Teddy rubbed his face against Steve's shoulder and patted at it angrily, and Steve finally thought to set down the cup of milk and go find Teddy's shiny bowl just as Teddy whined, "Wee-oo."

"I know, pal," Steve said, sitting down again and bracing the bowl against his chest for Teddy to snuggle close to. "I miss him too."

There was a little silence where Natasha didn't seize that opening. Steve looked over at her to see her frowning at the screen. "Nat? Did you find something?"

"Many things," Natasha said, her frown still firmly in place. "His birthday is August 16, so you should probably get those party invitations sent out soon."

Steve looked down at Teddy, feeling a strange wave of relief. They hadn't missed his first birthday, at least. Steve could get him a cake, and take pictures, and do whatever else he had to do to make Teddy's first birthday what it should be.

Natasha added, in a tone of such elaborate casualness that Steve was on alert from the first word, "And if you give me two more minutes I can tell you where to address one to his mother."


	11. Chapter 11

Sam had had enough experience of safehouses in the last several months not to be surprised when Bucky's just looked like a house. It was set well back on a lot that was probably measured in acres rather than square feet--there were no near neighbors, and trees broke up the sightlines from the road. The grass was high, but that seemed unremarkable here.

Bucky touched a garage door opener clipped to the visor and pulled right into a two-car garage. The other half of the garage held a riding mower that looked to have been used, if not recently, some stacked plastic bins, and a couple of workbenches with tools neatly hung on pegboards above them. 

Sam eyed those plastic bins warily. He had a feeling they weren't full of Christmas decorations and musty camping gear--though, hell, maybe they were. Maybe someone had been that thorough about setting this place up.

Bucky got out and walked directly to the door into the house, not looking around at any of the contents of the garage. Sam followed him. 

The house had a vacant, industrially-cleaned smell to it. Everything in sight from the door--a family room and big bright kitchen--was perfectly neat. There were tidy, parallel tracks from a vacuum cleaner's wheels in the carpeting of the family room, perfectly plumped throw pillows on the couch. 

Bucky stopped to take his boots off on the tiled floor, setting them neatly to one side. Sam followed suit, keeping a wary eye on Bucky; his silence wasn't strange, but he couldn't ignore the possibility that being in a HYDRA safehouse would trigger something--in the completely normal post-traumatic sense, even if not the lethal-brainwashing sense.

"You got any idea where we should start?" Sam asked, hoping Bucky would look back at him, show something like the actual person under the damage who he'd seen back in the car. 

"Yeah, this is all just..." Bucky waved a hand. "Camouflage. There's a computer downstairs, maybe some paper records."

Sam nodded and followed Bucky through the pristine kitchen to the basement door, but the empty stillness of the house felt strange. He felt on high alert, wanting to clear the place before they went further in--but if Bucky felt sure it was secure, it had to be, didn't it? Bucky wasn't exactly displaying a trusting nature these days. Bucky had taken off his boots. 

Sam followed him down the basement stairs.

* * *

Steve glanced around the park uneasily as he followed Natasha, who had her head down over her phone. "Sam would tell me not to do it like this, wouldn't he."

"Sam's not here," Natasha replied, which meant _yes, obviously_. 

Steve adjusted his grip on Teddy, who was curled up tight against his chest, doing his best to ignore the existence of the outdoors and all the people around them enjoying the park on a warm Sunday afternoon. 

"Got her," Natasha muttered. "Two hundred yards, two o'clock."

Steve adjusted the worn baseball cap he'd found in a closet at Gertie's, then hurriedly wrapped his arm back around Teddy, shrugging his shoulder to keep the backpack serving as a diaper bag in place. In the process, he caught sight of a woman sitting in a low lawn chair by a cooler. The color of her hair was obscured by a faded pink sunhat, and she had a paperback folded down on her lap as she tipped her head back. There was another low chair set up beside her, and a faded bedspread serving as a picnic blanket, the corners held down by assorted shoes and a baseball mitt. 

"And there's the husband and kids," Natasha added, tilting her head very slightly in the direction of a nearby playground. "I'll run interference, you make contact."

Natasha turned away before Steve could object, and he kept walking, following the path and keeping an eye on the woman Natasha had identified. Dana Morris, age thirty-four, married twelve years, mother of three. Or... maybe more than three. 

Steve adjusted his grip on Teddy again, and Teddy sat up, then made a discontented sound that was somehow exactly the miniature version of Bucky objecting to being woken up early. Teddy rubbed his eyes, and Steve shifted one hand to shade his son's face.

He'd drawn even with where Mrs. Morris was sitting, and looked around for Natasha. His gaze almost passed over her; her body language and expression were decidedly _not Natasha_. It was only the brightness of her hair that caught his eye. She was chatting with a man who was pushing a dark-haired little girl on a swing.

Steve forced his gaze back to Mrs. Morris and strode toward her. There was no guarantee that she wasn't still in some danger--and no guarantee that she didn't know more than the files implied about who had made Teddy and what they'd done to him or where they might have gone. He had to look her in the eyes, and know what she knew. He had to be sure his family was safe. If he had to ruin her peaceful Sunday afternoon to do it, well. He had to. 

"Mind if I pull up some grass here?" Steve didn't go full _Captain America_ with his intonations, but he didn't bother trying to modulate himself into an unremarkable civilian, either.

Mrs. Morris startled a little, one hand going to her hat as she straightened up in her seat, but her smile was instant and automatic. "Oh, feel free--you can put the little one down on our blanket if you don't have one."

Steve nodded his thanks and sat, but Teddy stayed curled tight against his chest. Mrs. Morris frowned a little, looking at him. It was the look people got when they saw him out of context, when they knew they knew his face but couldn't quite place it. 

He was pretty sure, right then, that she didn't know a damn thing. If she did, she'd recognize him at ten yards.

"We're just in town visiting family," Steve said, as though that were some kind of explanation for his presence in this park, at the edge of Mrs. Morris's picnic blanket. He looked down at Teddy, rubbing his back as he added, "Gertie Elkins. I don't know if you know her."

"Oh," Mrs. Morris said. " _Oh._ You're..."

Steve looked up and saw the recognition on her face; whether or not she knew Gertie personally, she knew who Gertie was, and what her connection was to a few famous faces in history books. She knew who Steve was now. 

Mrs. Morris frowned slightly, looking down at Teddy. Because, of course, if she knew who Steve was, Teddy became a puzzle. 

"He's my son," Steve said, and her gaze darted up from studying Teddy to meet his eyes. "Almost a year old, but I just found out about him--just found him--a few days ago."

Her lips parted, and her gaze dropped to Teddy again, just as Teddy decided to risk peeking out from his hiding place against Steve's chest. Steve held out a hand to shade his face, but he didn't block Mrs. Morris's view. 

She raised a hand to her mouth, and looked sharply away in the direction of her family. Steve looked too. Natasha was chatting animatedly with a boy who was maybe ten years old, pushing another kid on the swings while Mr. Morris pushed his dark-haired daughter. 

Steve looked up at Mrs. Morris again, and her eyes were wide and a little shiny as she stared down at Teddy. "Is he--when did you say is his first birthday?"

"August 16th," Steve said softly, looking down again to give her a moment. "I think it was a surrogate who gave birth to him. She probably had no idea who his parents really were, any more than I knew he was being born."

"What..." Her voice wavered. "What's his name?"

Steve coaxed Teddy to turn a little further out to face Mrs. Morris; he rubbed his eyes again but leaned back against Steve drowsily, not protesting. "His name is Teddy."

"Oh--" she made a sound like a hiccup, and Steve saw her make a half-suppressed movement in his peripheral vision, her whole body jerking a little from some unseen impact. 

Teddy squirmed away, as if the shockwave of it had hit him. He pulled himself up to stand against Steve's chest and smacked at Steve's left shoulder as he let out a little unhappy whimper. Steve curled his left arm around Teddy and kissed the top of his head, shrugging his right shoulder to free the hastily-packed diaper bag. He unzipped it just far enough to fit his hand inside and grabbed Teddy's metal bowl, reaching over to turn it down over his left shoulder. 

"Wee-oo," Teddy whined into his shirt, but he went mostly limp, curling his right arm halfway around the bowl as he patted at it.

"You really are his dad," Mrs. Morris said, a little damp, but steady.

Steve looked up, and she gave a wavering smile that he'd seen on a lot of people who, despite the disaster they'd just witnessed or been nearly killed by, were happy to see Captain America standing in front of them. 

"You're good with him, you--" Mrs. Morris gestured a little. "You're his dad. That's... that's good to know. I always... I knew he wasn't mine, but you can't help wondering, after. If they're okay, if the--the people who--"

Her voice cracked and failed, and this time Steve reached out. She grabbed his hand like he could pull her to safety, even though there was no place more safe than any other, when it came to this. This, too, was familiar from the normal kind of disaster. It was strange here, in the middle of a park with no visible destruction anywhere, and Teddy leaning drowsily against his chest, mumbling to the metal bowl on his shoulder.

Steve scooted himself a little closer, so Mrs. Morris could relax her arm a little, and waited for her to say more. He could feel the shaking of her body through his arm, but she was doing a good job of crying unobtrusively. He didn't let himself look over to see how Natasha was distracting her family now. 

"How did you find me?" She asked after a while. 

"The people who had him had files," Steve said quietly. "Records of the... the different attempts to produce someone like him."

She made a muffled sound and folded forward a little, bracing her free elbow on her knee. Steve squeezed her hand and swallowed the urge to apologize, to back off. He'd started this, and he would finish it unless she asked him to stop. There was no use leaving it half done. 

"How... how many," she asked. 

"Six, total," Steve said. "Teddy was the sixth. You were their first choice, though."

Natasha had found the fate of Specimen One in the files as they were driving over here.

Mrs. Morris nodded, her pink sunhat bobbing up and down; he couldn't see her face at all now. "I... I had a miscarriage, the first time. I was sick the whole time, and then... I felt so awful for... for them. They seemed like such nice--" 

Steve squeezed her hand again. He clearly wasn't going to have to break it to her that she'd carried a baby--twice--for a HYDRA genetics project. 

"I came to see you because you have a right to know what really happened," Steve said softly. "And because I was worried about what they might have done to you. To make it work, the second time."

Her head jerked up, and she met his eyes. Her eyes were a startlingly familiar blue. 

"Oh God," she whispered. "What..."

Steve shook his head. "I don't know. We didn't find anything obvious in the files. If you've been okay, since..."

She looked down at herself, at Teddy, at him. "They gave me shots. To prevent another miscarriage, they said. It was supposed to be progesterone."

Steve bit his lip and didn't say anything about what it might have actually been. They hadn't found anything clear about that so far.

"I healed faster after he was born," she whispered. "Not... nothing crazy, but I'd expected it to be worse than with Olivia, and it... it wasn't. Even after the miscarriage I took months, but..."

Steve nodded slightly. "Did they, uh. Did they ask you a lot of questions about... genealogy?"

She took her hand back as she nodded, turning to rummage in a purse nearly the size of Steve's diaper bag to come up with tissues. As she blotted her eyes she said, "My family's been in this area for ages, so I'm cousins with half the county--including Gertie, of course, third or fourth cousins, I think. The funny thing is, I found out afterward, because my brother got curious and started doing more research--we're cousins, too, distantly. You and me."

Mitochondrial DNA. That had been the key, hadn't it? If they'd tested her blood, they'd have known, even if the link wasn't documented. That was why they had asked her to try again, after Specimen One, and Specimens Two through Five, didn't survive.

"In the maternal line?" Steve asked, though he already knew what the answer had to be. "Through your mother and my mother?"

"Yes," she said, wiping her eyes that were just the same color as his mother's. As his. "Yes, it's something like eight generations back, but that was the funny thing--it was all mothers all the way back, yours and mine."

 _Yeah, it's all mothers here_ , Steve thought, struggling for something more proper to say as he cuddled Teddy against his chest. _You and me._

* * *

Bucky carried the entire fireproof filing cabinet up to the truck while Sam packed up the parts of the computer that mattered. When he came back down, he found Sam standing in the corner of the basement where Bucky had his bed, by the concealed door that led into the escape tunnels. 

Sam was just standing there, looking down at the bed, which Bucky had made up neatly that morning, smoothing the unzipped sleeping bag over the double mattress, which was covered very properly with a fitted sheet. The pillow was plumped and lay squarely in the middle, neatly aligned with the lines of mortar in the cinder block wall. 

Steve's helmet was beside the pillow, on the corner of the mattress that was tucked into the corner of the walls. It was the most shielded spot in the house. 

"Did you see anything else we should bring?" Bucky asked.

Sam turned promptly, but without any sign of being startled by Bucky's presence. He shook his head slowly, giving Bucky a look that felt like being studied, the same way he'd been standing still and looking at Bucky's bed. "Just whatever you want to bring with you for you. Gertie's gonna want you to stay over at the house, you know that."

He thought of a little upstairs bedroom with a slanted ceiling and a view out over the green fields of neighboring farms that seemed to stretch out forever between him and New York. A narrow bed with white sheets that smelled of strong soap and sunshine, a younger cousin bedding down on the floor, the voices of grownups rising and falling somewhere in the house...

Bucky shook his head. "I don't take orders from my baby sister."

Sam raised his eyebrows. "Could've fooled me, man. But hey, you wanna be the one to make a second trip back here, that's your call. But Teddy's not gonna want to let you out of his sight again once we get back."

Bucky walked away without trying to make an argument, looking around the basement himself for anything else that might contain any useful information. He found himself standing in front of a chest freezer, feeling vaguely sick, and that was when the words actually formed in his mouth. "I can't. I told you."

"You keep saying that," Sam replied, coming over to stand beside him. "I don't think that word means what you think it means."

Bucky scowled harder and, with a faint sense that he would show Sam how wrong he was, shoved the lid of the chest freezer open.

It was warm inside, long unplugged. There were rows of racks, the right size to hold small vials.

They were all empty. 

"Well, that's horrifying," Sam said evenly. "Bucky, this isn't just a safehouse, is it."

Bucky shook his head and turned away, picking up the box of computer stuff Sam had packed and heading up the stairs.

Sam followed. "This isn't, like, a general purpose Hydra hideout, is it? This is--someone lived here. Someone who worked on this project. Maybe the person who _ran_ this project."

Bucky walked faster, making for the door. He only turned when he realized Sam wasn't right behind him anymore.

Sam had stopped in the kitchen and was looking down the hall that led to the front door, and the stairs up to the second floor.

"No," Bucky said. 

Sam looked over at him, eyebrows up again.

"It's a safehouse. That's all." The words came out stilted and flat, but Bucky couldn't make them more persuasive. He was struggling to contain something--he didn't know what--that was fighting its way out of him. _I can't, I can't, I can't, not again, not anymore, I can't--_

"Okay," Sam said. "Then I'm just gonna go check how safe it is up--"

" _No_." It felt like a scream in Bucky's chest, but the sound that came out was a strangled whisper, barely louder than the whirring of his arm as it recalibrated, bracing for something. But there was no threat here, in this quiet, clean house. It was the safest place of all. He should have brought Teddy--

"No," he repeated, dropping the box and backing toward the door.

Sam raised his hands, palm out. "Bucky, do you remember ever being here before the last few days?"

Bucky shook his head hard, but he knew that didn't mean anything, because he had known to come here. He had been driving the truck, registered at this address. But he didn't remember. He couldn't remember. So many things kept coming back to him, but not this place. 

"Bucky?" 

He'd been hearing his name repeated for a while before he actually looked up and saw Sam standing there--still a few meters away, still holding his hands out nonthreateningly. He'd expected someone looming over him, a rough prod or a careless slap. But Sam just kept talking to him.

"Can you tell me why we shouldn't go upstairs?" Sam asked. "Can you tell me what's gonna happen if we go upstairs?"

Bucky shook his head, and as he recognized the truth of it he straightened up, his jaw clenching. He didn't know what the hell was up there, but whatever it was, he was scarier than it was, and once Sam saw it, maybe he would understand. Maybe Bucky would understand himself. 

Bucky pushed off from the door and strode into the kitchen. Sam fell back a step to clear his path, but followed right on his heels again as Bucky headed up the soft-carpeted stairs to the second floor.

The sense of _no, don't_ increased as he walked up the stairs. All the doors in the upstairs hallways--sterile bathroom, two immaculate bedrooms, even the folding door of a linen closet--stood open, except one. 

Bucky shouldered through it roughly, and then stopped in the middle of the room. 

The smell of bleach was faint but distinct. The wall around the head of the bed, which was missing its mattress, had been scrubbed down to the sheetrock, which removed the stains but not the bullet holes. A section of the carpet had been cut away, and there was no night stand on that side of the bed, although there was a lamp, cord coiled neatly around the base, sitting on the bare subfloor in the place where a night stand should have been. The shade was tinted glass: easily cleaned.

"Okay," Sam said. "So whoever was running the project is out of the picture."

Bucky closed his eyes, straining for memory, and memories flooded in. He recalled one dark bedroom after another, sleeping bodies easily dispatched by whatever method he had been directed to use. Throats slit, bullets in brains, necks broken, pillows held down over faces. Staged suicides, most of them. 

He couldn't remember doing his own cleanup. He couldn't remember disposing of bodies, or racks of hoarded biological samples. He couldn't remember this place, this room, this blood on his hands and then bleached off. He was standing right here and he still couldn't remember it. 

"I can't." He opened his eyes and stared down at those hands. He pictured Teddy between them and felt sick. "This is why I can't. I don't even know what I did here, and I don't know why. You have to see that."

He heard Sam moving around quietly, in the sterilized area. 

"Dust," Sam said finally. "Dust is what I see. There's dust on the box spring here, dust on the lamp cord. This didn't happen in the last few days."

Bucky shook his head sharply. "No, I. I already had the truck. I already knew I could hide out here."

The mattress had already been in the basement, waiting for him. how many times had he come back here, only to... what?

"You already knew this was a safehouse," Sam corrected, straightening up as he spoke, swinging wide around Bucky to lean against a wall where Bucky could see him without looking at the bed. "You had no hesitation about bringing me here, which you would've if you were thinking this place was something you should hide from me, or from Steve."

"I shouldn't," Bucky said. "You should know, you should..." He shook his head, looking away from the patient, calm expression on Sam's face. This wasn't going the way it was supposed to go, although he couldn't think how it _should_ go. 

People screaming and running for the hills at the sight of him, probably. That sounded about right. He shouldn't have to _convince_ anyone that he was a monster. 

"I know what I've seen," Sam said. "First time I saw you when you weren't brainwashed by HYDRA, you scolded me for making Teddy cry and you comforted him until he went to sleep. That kind of thing makes an impression, man. If this guy was really HYDRA, if he was the one who stole Steve's DNA and combined it with yours to see if he could make a better supersoldier and kept your baby in a secret lab for experimental purposes? Getting shot in the head in his sleep's about what he deserved. Steve would have killed him if he got the chance, and so would I. But that only applies if you had a choice about doing it, and I don't think you did."

"But I did it," Bucky insisted. "You want me to... but I'm the one who did it."

"And if they mind-controlled me I would've done it," Sam said. "And if they mind-controlled Steve he would've done it. What do you remember, before the last few days? Before you found Steve's helmet?"

Bucky closed his eyes, tipping his head back. That was the million-dollar question, wasn't it?

"Nothing," Bucky said. "I never saw that place before. I never saw Teddy before. I was... out west somewhere. I realized I was going the wrong way, and I turned around and drove back here. To find... whatever it was I was supposed to find. I was hurrying."

"You leave a trail of bodies? Stick up gas stations? Run over dogs?"

Bucky gritted his teeth and didn't respond, but the memories flickered through his mind of peeling bills from a rubber-banded stack. Waiting in line while the frantic urge to hurry beat at him. Throwing down twice as much as he owed on the counter and running out when he couldn't bear it anymore. But he hadn't hurt anyone, or stolen anything, except that pile of cash, which he was pretty sure came from somewhere in this house.

"I had to..." Bucky rubbed his face, marshaling the words into a coherent order and not letting himself second guess whether he should say it at all, confession or excuse or whatever it was. "When I found the helmet. I remembered Steve's name, when I picked it up. I remembered my name. And I remembered that I had remembered once before. When he told me, on the helicarrier. But in between I forgot."

"You think you forgot due to natural causes? Or because you wanted to?"

Bucky dropped his hand and shook his head. "I know someone made me. But if they made me once, they could make me again."

"Well, if you want to keep Hydra brainwashers away from you, I gotta guess that _right next to Captain America's kid_ is going to be about the most secure place you could want for the next eighteen years."

Bucky glared at him, although on meeting Sam's eyes it was hard to forget standing with him in Gertie's kitchen, Teddy tucked between them, feeding both of them Cheerios. He knew Sam had to be thinking of it. Sam had to think that it meant Bucky was safe, could be trusted, and Bucky didn't know how to even name the sense of threat that kept beating at him, the awareness that the danger in the room with his child was _him_. 

Bucky turned and walked away, unable to bear standing in that room another minute; he made it halfway down the softly carpeted stairs before his knees went out, and he sat down right there. He heard Sam's footsteps after a moment, and then Sam wedged himself in beside Bucky on the same step. Bucky wanted to lean away, but he was suddenly too weary to move, and the press of another body against his felt like sunlight after a long time underground, even if it was just a shoulder and knee brushing his.

"Back before Steve recruited me into his superhero circus, I worked at the VA counseling vets who were having a hard time coming back from the war to civilian life," Sam said. "And before that I was Air Force. The 58th, Pararescue." 

Bucky looked over at him, getting a brief flash of memory: Sam, who had had not only wings, but combat gear and a pair of submachine guns in his hands, hovering above Bucky and firing down at him until Bucky brought him down with a grappling hook. 

He was definitely Steve's type.

"You're not the first guy I've ever met who was scared he was going to hurt his own kid," Sam added, and that brought up an entirely different memory. Bucky's old man and his heavy hand, the way his mother told him it was because of the war. Bucky didn't even have to be programmed wrong, did he? He could have just turned into his own pop, and that would have been enough reason to keep him away from Teddy.

He thought of being that, of Teddy flinching from his hand, and had to put his face in his hands to fight of a wave of sickness.

"But the ones who are scared are the ones who know there's a problem to solve. They get the kind of help they need, they're alert to the danger their condition presents. I'm not gonna say nobody who knows what's going on ever screws up, or gets overwhelmed by what's going on in his head and does something he regrets. But this isn't an unsolvable problem, and I'm not some civilian off the street who's never seen anything like this before. And I'm telling you, you can come home to Teddy and Steve. You can be part of this, if that's what you want."

Bucky shook his head a little. "Maybe I--maybe someday. But I hardly know who I am. I keep getting things back all the time, but I don't know how it fits, I don't know what any of it _means_. I don't know who the hell I am."

Except, some treacherous part of him knew, he was Teddy's pop. But what the hell good was that, if he wasn't going to be a good one?

Sam nodded slowly. "What are you thinking? What's your plan for figuring that out? There are some inpatient places where you could get genuinely good treatment, although they're never gonna have seen anybody quite like you."

Bucky was on his feet with his back to the wall of the stairwell before Sam finished speaking. He was already breathing fast before he identified the reaction as fear.

Sam looked up at him and stayed where he was, sitting below him with his hands where Bucky could see them.

"Yeah, okay, I didn't really think you'd go for that one," Sam said. "But, man, if you're planning to just stay in the wind until you're sure you're better, I got news for you. You don't learn how to live your life by running away from it. You don't learn how to be a part of your kid's life by only seeing him through a scope."

Bucky closed his eyes and leaned back against the wall. "How do I know, though. How can I..."

There was a quiet little thumping sound and Bucky opened his eyes to watch as Sam scooted backwards up a few stairs, so he could look Bucky in the eye on the level without ever standing up. 

"You can't know, a hundred percent," Sam said firmly. "You have to look at your track record. Not shit you've done in general, but how you are when you're with Teddy. Because the only thing I've ever seen him trigger in you is the instinct to cuddle him, and that's not a bad thing to cultivate if you want to figure out how to be part of his life."

"That's what you've seen," Bucky put in. "That's what we know. But there's a year I can't remember, and we don't know anything about what I did then."

" _We_ don't know," Sam said. "But Teddy does. And the first word Teddy spoke to us--the only one he really had when we first found him--was _wee-oo_ , which is what he calls your arm." 

Sam gestured toward it, and it whirred quietly under Bucky's concealing sleeve, as if responding to its name. Bucky flexed those fingers instinctively, remembering Teddy's fingers digging into the seam of his scars. 

"Anything that reminds him of your arm comforts him--Steve's shield, or anything shiny and metal. You know how weird that is? There's a famous study on orphaned monkeys, where they offered them two surrogate mother objects, one made of metal, one cloth. Even when they could only get food from the metal one, they would run away from it as soon as they were done eating and cuddle with the cloth one. It's innate for babies to want something soft and warm for comfort. You know how much love and care he's got to have associated with a cold metal arm for it to be the thing he looks for for comfort?"

Bucky looked down at his hand. He wanted to argue, but the truth was that _he_ didn't even particularly like his arm. It would be natural for Teddy to flinch from it, but he didn't. He reached for it. Every time. He was reassured by it. By Bucky's shoulder, mostly, like he was accustomed to being cradled against Bucky's chest where he could reach it.

"It's probably the easiest way for him to know for sure that it's you," Sam said. "They might have had people care for him who dressed like you, had their hair like yours, maybe even wore masks to look like you. But they couldn't have faked your arm for shit. And if he wants to be sure it's you, that means you're the person he trusts. You think he would trust you like that, want you above anybody else, if you ever hurt him or scared him? He's a baby, but babies are constantly learning. They know what hurts."

Bucky raised his right hand to knead at the juncture of metal and flesh. _The fist of HYDRA_ , they had told him. It was a weapon, a tool. It had been welded on to him before he knew what was happening, while he was still hoping for rescue, hoping for Steve to find him and take him home. They had branded him with the red star, had been pleased to make their ghost a unique threat. A warning.

"Let's go ask him," Sam said. "Go back to Gertie's, let Teddy see you, and really watch what he does. Because Teddy's the only person who knows how you treated him during all that time you can't remember. And he's not gonna lie, man. Whatever you get from him, that's the truth."

Bucky met Sam's eyes again, and Sam looked back steadily. Sam knew this test was only going to go one way. And Bucky knew that if he went back one more time, looked into his son's face, he wasn't going to be able to fight what he saw there. Not when Gertie and Steve and Sam and, hell, even Natalia Romanova, all seemed to agree with Teddy's assessment. 

"I have to grab some stuff," Bucky said, turning away, and hurried back down to the basement to stuff Steve's helmet and a few other items into a pillowcase. He carefully didn't look at the mattress, and definitely didn't check under the sheet for any stains it might conceal. He didn't have time for that right now. He needed to get home to his little boy.


	12. Chapter 12

Bucky stared out the window all the way back to Gertie's, only remembering that he ought to have been driving when they had arrived and Sam tossed the keys into his lap. 

"I'll go in first, make sure Teddy's awake and not too distracted. We'll get that squared away first if we can, okay?"

Bucky looked down at the keys, closing his hands around them. He was suddenly as much nervous as eager to see Teddy. 

What if this time, Teddy remembered to be frightened? What if this time...

"Buck!" 

He looked up and saw that he'd missed a few crucial minutes. Steve was standing the porch already, waving him inside. Bucky shoved the keys into his pocket and went.

Steve gave him a half-smile when he came close enough, and that fit somehow. It felt like going into battle, that look of Steve's that said, _If we've got to do this I'm glad you're with me._

"Steve..." Bucky hesitated on the threshold.

"Nope, get a move on," Steve said implacably, giving him a little shove. 

That wasn't Captain Rogers speaking; that was just Steve, the defiant little punk he'd known back in Brooklyn, when they had goaded each other into doing all kinds of stupid things. He could drag this out, but Steve wasn't going to let him back away. It'd serve him right if Bucky wound up puking on his shoes. 

He let himself be propelled inside.

"In here, Bucky," Sam called from the front parlor, so Bucky went that way. Sam and Gertie were sitting on a sofa in there, Natasha standing in the further doorway that led to the dining room. Teddy was standing by himself in the middle of the room, looking around at a scattering of toys and books, all brightly colored things, new and clean. 

Bucky knelt down and held out his left hand. "Hey, baby bear."

Teddy's whole face lit up, and he crowed, "Wee-oo!" 

He took three wobbling steps with his hands outstretched and caught hold of Bucky's metal fingers--but he wasn't only looking at Bucky's arm. He was looking at Bucky's face, beaming and wriggling with happiness as he clung to Bucky's hand. 

Bucky swallowed hard, seeing the certainty on his son's face. "I told you, Teddy, it's _Papa_."

Teddy wobbled, and Bucky gathered him up before he could fall, hugging him close and breathing in the baby smell of him. 

"Well," Steve said. "I think that answers the question of whether you're staying for dinner. How many burgers should we put on the grill for you, Buck?"

* * *

Sam watched Bucky with Teddy for a few minutes after that resounding success, waiting for something, but nothing really happened. Teddy squirmed and smacked at Bucky's shoulder, and Bucky let him down to get back to his toys and sat down on the floor to watch him play. They both just acted like it was normal, like they did this every day.

Maybe they had, sometime recently.

Natasha was heading back to HQ, so Sam and Steve helped her pack up all the intel she was taking with her and loaded it up when she went and retrieved her car from where she'd stashed it a half mile away. All the time Bucky was still Bucky, carrying Teddy around or watching over him, as quiet and self-contained as ever. He responded to Steve and to Gertie when they spoke to him, but mostly he had his eyes on Teddy, laser-focused.

Sam knew that nothing, least of all Teddy, was just going to _cure_ Bucky, or even push him to some big breakthrough. After the last several months chasing Steve around, Sam really had started believing in the impossible just happening all the damn time. But Steve couldn't punch his way through what had been done to Bucky; whatever happened next, Bucky would probably get to it the slow way, like anybody else, one step at a time. 

Still, Sam reflected, drinking a beer and supervising Steve and the grill, a day full of bombshells had ended in a quiet summer evening. He was with Steve and Teddy and Bucky and Gertie, all under one roof, and the biggest hazard to anyone's safety right now was Steve--Sam's _future husband_ \--cooking up an industrial quantity of rare red meat. 

That was probably plenty of impossible to ask for in one day.

Bucky graciously allowed Sam and Steve to take charge of Teddy during dinner, and to give him the bath he desperately needed afterward. Teddy was mostly inclined to enjoy bathtime, so it was an exercise in two grown men being unable to keep hold of a wet, naked, wiggly toddler, but at least Teddy spent most of it laughing at them instead of wailing inconsolably. 

"Here, your turn, we gotta change." Steve held Teddy out when they stepped out of the bathroom and found Bucky waiting in the hallway. There was a faintly smug expression on his face as he took in the fact that they had both been splashed from head to toe. It was almost enough to make a man forget that Bucky had probably stood in that exact spot and listened the entire time. 

Bucky nodded as he accepted the towel-wrapped baby, jerking a thumb toward the guest room with the crib. "I'll settle him down and put him to bed."

Sam watched Steve swallow the question, and asked it himself since no one else was going to. "You're sleeping here too, right?"

Bucky bounced Teddy a little on his arm and nodded seriously. "I'll bunk down in his room, so you don't have to worry about him overnight."

There wasn't actually an adult-sized bed in that room, but Sam was a thousand times happier thinking about Bucky sleeping on the floor there than in that creepy-as-hell not-a-safehouse basement, so he wasn't going to push it. 

Steve just smiled, reached out and squeezed Bucky's softer shoulder. "Glad to hear it, Buck."

Bucky's hand flexed like he might have returned the touch, and then he dropped his gaze and nodded. Steve let go of him, and Bucky turned away and slipped into the nursery. 

After a second's pause, Steve headed down to the guest room where they'd piled their stuff at the foot of a mercifully king-sized bed covered with an old-fashioned patchwork quilt in shades of purple and blue. They didn't speak as they stripped out of their wet clothes and into dry underwear and shirts. 

"Better ask Natasha to send us some clothes along with whatever intel she finds," Sam said, watching Steve arrive at the same conclusion he'd just hit himself. Neither of them actually had a dry pair of pants that wasn't part of their Avengers uniform. 

Steve nodded, and then looked over his shoulder with that unpracticed flirting look of his, 75% shy and 25% trying it on. "Gonna need something presentable to get married in, at the very least."

Sam had to kiss him, then. 

They met halfway, at the foot of the bed, and the wriggle of Steve's body in Sam's arms felt more like Teddy's giggling bathtime enthusiasm than anything sexy on purpose. Sam broke away to laugh under his breath, and Steve was right there with him, leaning in so their foreheads touched. 

They were actually going to get _married_. Steve was going to be his husband, Teddy was going to be his kid, and this was going to be his life from now on, all legal and committed. Even if he couldn't hack it as an Avenger forever--or sensibly retired sometime after he turned forty, please God let him live that long--this was for keeps. Steve, and Teddy, and... the rest of the family.

After a second, Sam drew back a little, keeping his grip on Steve. He couldn't really doubt Steve's intentions, but he had to say, "I notice we didn't tell Natasha about the getting-married part."

Steve shook his head, not seeming at all surprised by Sam pointing it out. "Bucky first. I know you didn't tell him while you were off together."

Sam blew out a breath. "No, we... we did not talk about that."

It crashed back on him then, a cold dash of HYDRA after a quiet domestic evening. He should have told Steve sooner, probably--but beyond passing along the files and the fact that he'd talked Bucky into staying, none of it was exactly urgent. 

Important, definitely. But it wasn't going anywhere, and wouldn't change anything, Sam was sure. Not for Steve.

Steve was giving him a worried look. "Sam? Did he--you'd have told me if he did anything."

Sam shook his head and turned half away, sinking down to sit on the foot of the bed. "Not like that, no. Not... not today. Not to me."

Steve sat down beside him, and his gaze darted toward the door--toward where Bucky was settling Teddy down for bed.

"That house... it was locked up, but it wasn't Fort Mead, right? It's a house. But he wouldn't-- _would not_ clear the house before we went down to the basement. Even when we got the stuff and came back up, he didn't want me to go upstairs. When I pushed him on it, he checked out completely."

Steve was frowning in concentration and worry, his attention angling toward the door again. "That's--dissociation? Do you know why?"

"Well, given what we found when I did get him to go upstairs, I'm guessing something real bad happened there that he didn't want to know about. See--the whole place looked like a house, just a completely regular house. No rooms with more beds than you might need if you weren't going to bunk down a combat team, no big weapons caches."

"Natasha didn't think there'd be a safehouse here," Steve added, fitting the evidence together. "So this was... just somebody's house. Somebody high up in the project?"

"That's my guess--Bucky mentioned there were tunnels, and signal shielding, so with that kind of precaution, whoever lived there was probably the one running the whole show. The files from the computer ought to tell us for sure. But upstairs--"

"God, his body wasn't still there, was it?" 

Sam let out a breath. "No. No, it had been cleaned up. All the physical traces had been removed. The mattress was gone, but the bed was the same size as the mattress Bucky had been sleeping on in the basement."

Steve winced at that, and Sam had a feeling he could picture that desolate little corner all too clearly. Sam remembered the sight of Steve's helmet there, tucked into the corner of the bed like a... a teddy bear. 

"So..." Steve turned entirely toward Sam, leaning into him like he couldn't bear the weight alone. "So that was Bucky. He did that." 

Sam leaned into Steve right back, setting a hand on his knee. "That was the conclusion he immediately drew, and I can't see any reason to argue with him. He didn't seem to remember it any more than he remembers the rest of this, and he just looked like..." 

Sam shook his head, remembering that desolate, defeated expression, the way Bucky had crumpled halfway down the stairs. 

"I don't know, man. They did this to him. He may have pulled the trigger, but--somebody did this to him, and he knows it, and I don't know how he's gonna feel safe in his own head knowing they made him do this. This was recent, had to be after the helicarriers, which means there are still people out there who can control him like that, and he's got no idea who they are or how they did it."

Sam hadn't been able to look at that resigned horror and do nothing about it. He had thought he understood Steve's quest to find this man; he had read the same files Steve had read, had accepted the evidence that he was probably mostly a victim of the crimes he had committed. Sam had signed on for pursuing Bucky as someone to save, not someone to stop, but he'd still had that image of Bucky in his mind: indestructible, unstoppable. 

But then he had stood there and watched Bucky recognize the evidence that he had done something awful, and had no idea why, had no idea what had even really happened. 

This wasn't a misunderstanding, like Bucky thinking he had hurt babies who had never been born. This had really happened, and Bucky had in all likelihood really done what it looked like he'd done. He had been controlled, used like a weapon, a human drone, by people who were still out there somewhere. Whoever did this to him hadn't been revealed by the data dump; they were people Bucky still couldn't remember, wouldn't recognize on the street if they passed him. 

And now Bucky was just a man again, trying to face what his hands had been used for. What they could be used for again.

"Well, step one, he's gonna stay with us," Steve said softly. "You brought him home, Sam. You brought him out of that, you knew how to convince him, and I can't--"

Steve's arms went around Sam then, clinging tight, like he might drown if he let go. Sam hid his face against Steve's shoulder and held on just as hard. 

"Thank you," Steve whispered. "Thank you, for..."

Sam shook his head. "He's part of you. He's part of... of our son. And he's a human being who's hurting, who I can help." 

Steve made a little noise at that, loosening his grip when he probably wanted to tighten it and would have endangered Sam's ribs. He pressed a hard kiss to the edge of Sam's jaw. 

"We'll keep him safe," Sam promised softly. "We'll figure out who did this to him and we'll keep him safe and we'll give him a chance to heal from this."

Steve nodded against Sam's shoulder, but it was a long time before either of them could let go enough to get into bed.

* * *

None of it felt familiar, exactly, but Bucky found that he knew the procedure; Teddy's reactions seemed to verify that it _was_ the correct sequence of events. They played on the floor of the little room for a while, Teddy exploring every corner and returning to Bucky every minute or two to ascertain that he--or at least his metal arm--was still where Teddy had left him. Sometimes Teddy brought him one of the handful of small toys Bucky had set out from the ridiculous overabundance. 

When Teddy climbed into Bucky's lap and stayed put for more than a few seconds, the dusk outside the window had deepened enough to indicate that bedtime was at hand. Bucky picked him up and settled on the room's small trundle bed. He turned on a lamp and tucked a pillow behind his back, getting comfortable before he picked up one of the books from the stack. Teddy indicated when he wanted to read a book over and when he wanted a different one, so Bucky read _The Very Hungry Caterpillar_ twice, and _One Fish, Two Fish, Red Fish, Blue Fish_ six times before Teddy's eye-rubbing and yawning showed that he was finished with that step.

Then it was time for the--somewhat cooled, by now--warm milk Bucky had put in his sippy cup. Bucky sang softly while Teddy drank, cradled against Bucky's chest like an infant with a bottle. Teddy looked up solemnly at him, blinking slowly, showing not excited interest at something new, but the proper observation of a familiar rite.

Teddy knew him. Teddy knew this. And Bucky knew it too, somehow, even though the memories were lost to him.

He sat a while once Teddy had finished the milk, letting his son doze in his arms for the sheer comfort of that limp, trusting weight against his chest. Teddy snuggled in, patting his hand against Bucky's metal shoulder as he did.

_I'll remember this_ , Bucky promised himself. _At least I'll remember this. We can start from here._

He was still meaning to get up and put Teddy in the crib, as he knew he should, when he fell asleep.

* * *

Steve woke up early, full of that still-surprising sensation of being strong and without pain and having limitless possibilities before him. For years he had been thinking of it as feeling like his first steps out of Stark's Vita-Ray chamber back in 1943, but lately he'd begun to suspect that it was happiness.

It wasn't hard to put that name to it when he looked across the pillow and saw Sam sleeping just out of arm's reach. The sun was barely up, and in the early slanting light Sam's features were utterly relaxed, free of all the assorted worries Steve had brought into his life over the last several months.

That sent his thoughts darting toward Teddy and Bucky, and what Bucky had been through yesterday. Steve scooted closer to press a soft kiss to his cheek that made Sam scrunch up his face and hide in the pillow. 

Steve smiled at the reaction and slipped out of bed, pulling on his now-dry blue jeans but not bothering with a shirt or socks. A hint of nighttime coolness clung to the air, but it wouldn't last long. 

Steve closed the door quietly behind him, leaving Sam to sleep, and slipped across the hall to the room where Teddy and Bucky had spent the night. He put his hand to the knob and closed his eyes, sending up a belated prayer that Bucky had actually slept last night, and that Steve wouldn't find him standing guard over Teddy's crib after hours on alert, or just gone, despite what he'd said. 

The door swung open soundlessly when he turned the knob, but it was still a surprise to discover that not only was Bucky not still awake, but the opening door hadn't woken him.

Bucky was curled up asleep on the tiny trundle bed across from the crib, which was sized for a child smaller than Bucky had been even when he visited here as a kid. He hadn't pulled back the covers or taken off his boots, but his head was on the pillow--and Teddy was cuddled against his chest, sleeping just as soundly as Bucky.

Unlike Sam, Bucky didn't look entirely relaxed, even in his sleep. With a pang, Steve remembered that from the war; any time they'd been in a camp somewhere, Bucky's sleep was light and restless, and the wary tension never quite left his face. 

Steve stepped into the room and closed the door soundlessly behind him. He crouched by the bed and lowered one hand lightly onto Bucky's calf. "Relax, pal. We're way behind the lines here."

Bucky's eyes blinked open, his expression staying vague and sleepy. "Steve?"

"I got this watch," Steve promised him. "Gonna take your boots off you. Go back to sleep."

Bucky maybe nodded a little, maybe just nestled further into the pillow, and his eyes closed again. He didn't stir an inch while Steve was unlacing his boots and easing them off his feet. Steve stayed there, just looking at Bucky and Teddy, and then he thought, _Well, I'm allowed, aren't I?_

Sam had told him it was all right, and would understand needing it after what he'd told Steve last night. Bucky had reacted to him like he would have before, when it would have been a matter of course for Steve to share his blankets if they could get away with it. 

Steve nodded to himself and climbed up onto the little bed, folding his legs up behind Bucky's and draping himself half over Bucky when there wasn't enough room between him and the wall. Bucky made a grumpy half-asleep noise that Steve knew down to his bones and shifted over. Steve's heart skipped as he slid down behind Bucky, curling fully around him and sharing the little pillow. 

He laid his arm along Bucky's, over Teddy, and closed his eyes, breathing in the scent of Bucky's body and telling himself it wasn't just a dream. They were all here, all safe. They were all together, more or less.

Steve had just started to doze when he felt Bucky tense. He quickly lifted his arm away so Bucky wouldn't feel trapped, but Bucky didn't bolt out of the bed. He turned over--awkwardly, in the small space of the bed and while keeping Teddy cradled against his chest--and settled down again facing Steve. The frown on his face was balanced by the fact that one of his legs was thrown over Steve's, and his hair was in his face.

Steve reached out, slowly enough that Bucky would have no trouble seeing what he was doing, and tucked Bucky's hair behind his ear.

Bucky's forehead wrinkled in a frown, but he didn't flinch from the touch. "Stevie, what are you doing?"

His voice was low and rough with sleep, and it had been seventy years. Steve didn't want Bucky to have one second to think that what Sam had told him about what they found in that safehouse had made any difference. 

Steve leaned in and kissed him, just as softly as he'd kissed Sam a few minutes earlier. 

Bucky did jerk back after a few seconds of that, his eyes wider and more alert when they met Steve's again. 

"Sorry, I don't mean to rush you," Steve said softly, glancing down at Teddy. "Although I think our little chaperone here will keep things from too far. It's me, Buck. You and me. How I feel hasn't changed, and it isn't gonna change. You remember?"

Bucky nodded, glancing from Steve down to Teddy, and then toward the door. "Sam said... he doesn't mind? Like Peggy? But..."

Steve felt a new rush of relief and love--for Peggy, as well as the two men here with him. Thank God they'd done this once before, thank God Peggy had been so damn _sensible_ about it all that the idea of it came through in whatever memories Bucky did have of those days. 

"Just like Peg, yeah," Steve said softly. "In more than one way, actually, although me and Peggy never made it that far--I've asked Sam to marry me, and he said yes."

Bucky's frown at the words was pure confusion. "Like... really marry?"

Steve nodded quickly. "It's legal now, for two fellas, and with everything... I want him to know I'm serious about him, you know? I'm sticking around with him, with Teddy. We're going to be a family. I need him to know for sure."

Bucky ducked his head a little, looking down at Teddy, and Steve wondered whether he'd misjudged. 

His instinct was that Bucky wouldn't mind. They'd never thought of marrying each other; it just wasn't possible, and it had never seemed like it would be necessary, either. They knew what they were to each other, even if they could never acknowledge all of it to anyone else. They had never wavered in their faith to each other, give or take some brainwashing and misinformation. Steve would have married Peggy, if he'd been around at the end of the war to do it, and it wouldn't have changed a thing between him and Bucky. 

Now, though... maybe he should have at least offered it to Bucky first, or asked his permission, or his blessing. Maybe Bucky needed the reassurance, after so long apart and everything he'd been through.

When Bucky looked at him again, though, his frown was still just one of bafflement. "Isn't somebody supposed to promise to obey somebody else?"

Steve snorted. "Well, Peg never would have said that, and she wouldn't have imagined making me say it would do any good either."

Bucky nodded slowly, and looked down at Teddy again. "You'll be his parents, then. You and Sam. Married, so he won't be a bastard."

Steve winced. "Not--not just for that, Buck. And you'll still--"

Bucky flicked his fingers, waving that away. "But he'll have two real parents, the right way, on paper. You and Sam can be that. Even if I can stay with him without hurting him, I'm not... I don't _exist_."

Steve poked one finger slowly and firmly into Bucky's cheek, rousing Bucky to glare at him. 

"You seem pretty real to me," Steve said, letting himself smile. "We'll have to prove you are who we say you are, but you've got a pretty solid witness to your identity right here. Even if we can't get 'em to give up your Army pension, you're a _person_ , you've gotta be _somebody_. It'll take time, but I'm happy to spend _my_ Army pension on all the lawyers it takes to sort it out."

Bucky shook his head a little. "The things I did, Steve, they're not gonna let me just..."

"Hey," Steve said softly, leaning in for another quick kiss. "Nobody's taking you away from us again--not HYDRA, and not the government, especially not for things you were forced to do. If I went around killing civilians the way I killed HYDRA agents, they'd shoot me on sight when they caught up with me."

Bucky opened his mouth to argue, and Steve shook his head firmly.

"It matters what you did, Buck, I know you can't forget that. But it also matters why."

Bucky just looked at for him a moment, heavy-lidded and quiet, and Steve could feel everything he wanted, a life he could barely imagine and would kill to protect, teetering in the balance. 

"Got it all figured out, huh," Bucky said finally. 

Steve nodded, letting himself smile a little. "That's why I'm the captain, pal. All figured out."

Bucky closed his eyes again, and raised his right hand to wave at his head. "You got _this_ figured out? Because I don't. Be nice if somebody did." 

Steve caught that hand and pressed it against his chest, held between them like Teddy was. "I don't, Buck. I know that. But it can't be easier for you to figure it out on the run than someplace safe, with people who love you."

Bucky snorted softly and opened one eye. "That's what your man said. Said I couldn't figure out how to be good for Teddy by running away from him."

"Sam's smart like that," Steve agreed, daring a real smile, his heart warming at just the thought of Sam encouraging Bucky to stay. "That's why I've gotta make sure I can keep him around."

Bucky closed his eyes again at that, nodding. "Yeah, yeah, pal, you said."

"I want..." Steve took a deep breath, pressing Bucky's hand tighter against his heart. "I want you to be there, though, if--if you're willing. Be my best man?"

The wrinkle reappeared in Bucky's forehead, and Steve tried to breathe steadily, to keep even the beating of his heart calm and slow, while he waited for Bucky's answer. It was one thing for Bucky to accept Steve marrying Sam. It was another to ask him to watch it happen, to support it that way.

"Do I get to dance with the bride?" Bucky finally asked, no hint of a smile in his voice or on his face.

Steve shook his head. "Neither one of us is putting on a white dress, Buck."

Bucky shook his head right back. "Not coming to your wedding if I don't get to dance with _somebody_."

Steve opened his mouth to parry back, and it struck him all at once: contrary to all expectations he'd ever had outside a few daydreams during the war, _he was going to get married_. Not in a church, not to a woman, but he was going to have a wedding. He was going to be a married man; Sam was going to be his husband. And no matter what kind of bullshit he was talking, Bucky was going to be standing by his side to see it happen.

"Steve?" Bucky opened his eyes, the frown of concern back in place, though his words were light enough. "You having trouble thinking of who can stand up with me for a dance?"

Steve shook his head, still lost for words for a moment. His words came out nakedly earnest when he said, "We'll work something out, Buck. I promise."

Bucky gave a tiny nod, almost lost in the motion of him snuggling back into the pillow. He took his hand back from Steve, curling his arm around Teddy again. Steve wrapped his arm around Bucky, as much to keep him from falling off the little bed as for the pleasure of holding him close. 

They drowsed there together in the quiet--Steve was dimly aware of the sounds of Gertie moving around downstairs, the screen doors opening and closing, traffic going by on the road without slowing or stopping nearby. Sam's footfalls were a safe, familiar sound, nothing he had to be alert to, but he opened his eyes when he heard the door open. 

Sam looked half-asleep and amused. He raised his phone, his thumb tapping rapidly against the screen. Steve closed his eyes, for the verisimilitude of the thing, in case Sam wanted to capture them sleeping.

He wrinkled his nose then, the smell he'd been vaguely aware of cast into sharp relief now that he was closer to being awake. He picked his head up, curling awkwardly to get closer to Teddy's bottom for another investigative sniff. 

"Here," Sam said from right above him. "I'll take him, you keep his pop."

Steve looked up at Sam with a relieved smile, and Sam ducked in for a kiss, jerking back when he caught a whiff of Teddy. "Aw, no, kid, what did you do?"

But Sam reached down to tug Teddy out of Bucky's grip, and Bucky... 

Without even opening his eyes, Bucky let Sam take him. 

Steve pulled Bucky closer to fill the gap Teddy left, listening to Sam scold their son in fond tones as they went downstairs, and Steve thought he really hadn't lied. They were going to work this out.


	13. Chapter 13

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Happy Mother's Day, Steve!

He breathed in the familiar scent of Steve, a little too warm, a little sweaty-sour with sleep, and tucked his face down tighter. Just a few more minutes, they could sleep a few more minutes before--before--

But then it was too late, because he was struggling to remember, and then he _did_ remember, scrambling back and falling off the tiny bed in Grandma's--Gertie's--upstairs nursery in the old farmhouse. In Indiana. Where he had come, looking for his mission--his son. And found Steve. 

Steve was sitting up on the little trundle, watching him with a carefully still expression. Waiting for him to explode, waiting to see who he was going to turn out to be this time.

Bucky shook his head. "I can't--Steve, why did you let me, I can't--"

They had left him alone with Teddy last night, for hours and hours when he could have done anything, when he had already--the things he'd done--

It all flooded in at once, all the blood and the bodies and the way he'd felt nothing at all when he did it, just satisfaction. Just following orders.

Bucky shook his head harder, trying to push the images away, but he couldn't smell anything but smoke and blood and when he looked down he saw his metal hand had crushed one of Teddy's little toys. He felt his gorge rising, his pulse racing faster. He couldn't be here. He couldn't be trusted. He couldn't _do this_ and he didn't know why anyone let him try. 

He pushed up to his feet and ran for his familiar old room at the end of the hall. Steve chased him, but the window was already open, letting in the cool morning air. He kicked out the screen and went straight through, catching the familiar old tree branches on his way to the ground, and then he could run.

Steve could yell all he wanted. Bucky knew what he had to do, and he did it. He ran.

* * *

Sam looked up at the hard thump overhead, and then looked for Teddy. He was looking up too--and then he looked at Sam.

The flash of pleased recognition Sam felt, knowing that Teddy was looking to him for a cue on how to react to something possibly scary, was promptly eclipsed by the sound of running feet overhead. There were two sets, both heading away from the stairs.

When he heard Steve yell Bucky's name, Sam let his eyes close. He opened them a second later at a touch on his knee. Teddy was standing there, holding one of his books. 

"Yeah," Sam said. There was nothing else to do, really. "Okay, come here."

They made it through two pages of _The Hungry Little Caterpillar_ before Teddy was wiggling to get down. Sam let him go, and he crawled straight for the stairs, reaching the foot of them at the same time Steve did. 

Steve was holding Bucky's boots in one hand and his other hand was clenched in a fist; his expression cracked when he looked down at Teddy, and then he looked over at Sam.

Sam felt his own lips twitch up in recognition of the family resemblance. Steve looked at Sam when he didn't know how to react too.

Sam scooped Teddy up, guiding his lunge so he reached Steve's shoulder safely, and Steve brought his free hand up to hold on while Sam stepped in for a kiss, Teddy--and Bucky's boots--sandwiched between them.

"Steve," Sam said quietly.

Steve shook his head, turning toward the kitchen. "I know," he said as Sam followed him. "I know it's not... he'll come back. He just needs to run sometimes."

Sam could see the tension in every muscle of Steve's body. Bucky wasn't the only one who needed to run--but Sam wasn't going to take Teddy away from Steve right now. 

Steve set Bucky's boots down at one end of the kitchen table, and Sam glanced toward the back door reflexively--Gertie would have Steve's hide for that, and also, she had been on the back porch, so she had to have heard Steve yell, maybe saw where Bucky took off to. But he saw a flash of color and realized she was back in the garden patch. Whether she hadn't heard or was getting on with things herself, she wasn't going to come in and scold Steve for boots on the table in the next few minutes.

Steve, meanwhile, was pouring himself a cup of coffee, Teddy leaning contentedly against his shoulder for the moment. 

"It's not just his bed that's too soft, is it?" Steve said without looking up. "You and me, maybe we're used to sleeping on hard ground, maybe we... but Bucky, everything's too soft for him. Just being under cover is too much, just being near me. Or Teddy."

Well, at least Sam wasn't gonna have to give that talk at seven-thirty in the morning. "Yeah, probably, at this moment. But he'll come back."

Of course, no one could say _when_. Bucky was going to have good days and bad days, and there was no knowing exactly how bad a bad day might be for him, or how long it might last.

Steve nodded, staring into his coffee. "He just... he didn't even stop for his boots. He just ran off in his stocking feet. I took them off him, and he..."

Steve shook his head and took a sip of his coffee; Teddy reached for the mug, and Steve shifted his grip on Teddy and turned his head, keeping the two apart. Teddy gave an annoyed little half-cry and squirmed away from him, and Sam grabbed him before Steve had to figure out a solution to that dilemma. 

"Eat, man," Sam said, nodding toward the fridge and bouncing Teddy on his arm. 

Teddy continued to eye Steve's coffee cup.

Steve nodded and went to rummage through the refrigerator. "I know it's--I know he's been through a lot and he's not going to--I just--I told him. About us getting married. I asked him to be my best man."

Steve surfaced with two apples and a gallon of milk.

"How'd he take that?" Sam asked, when Steve went looking for cereal in the cupboards instead of continuing. Not that Sam couldn't see where Steve was going with that line of thought, but better to know exactly what they were looking at here.

"Fine, I thought." Steve got out the box of Cheerios, and Sam barely caught Teddy as he lunged for it. Steve shot him an apologetic look and went over to the table, pouring out a handful on the table while Sam followed him over to sit at that spot, allowing Teddy to chow down while Steve found himself a bowl and spoon. 

"But maybe it was too much," Steve went on. "Maybe I... I kissed him, too. He went back to sleep after, but maybe that was..."

"Could be," Sam said as Steve sat down, and Steve's eyes went a little wide, like he'd been expecting to hear that of course it didn't have anything to do with him.

_Stop the presses. For a second there Steve thought something wasn't his fault._

Sam offered him a half-smile. "Could've been what you told him, or the exact spot you put your hand, or the smell of your shampoo. And it could've been the weather, or the angle of the light, or a dream he had, or some random thought that crossed his mind. When he comes back, you can talk to him, ask if he knows what triggered him--what made him have to leave. If he knows, if it was something you did, you try not to do that again. If he doesn't know, or it wasn't you, you try to help him deal with it. That's all you can do, Steve. You can't go guessing or blaming yourself before he tells you what the problem is."

Steve looked down, nodding, muscle standing out in his jaw as he clenched his teeth. "It's about him. What he needs, what Teddy needs, that's what matters right now."

Sam opened his mouth to try to explain that Steve's feelings _also_ mattered, and Teddy shoved a Cheerio between his lips. He managed not to inhale the thing, and kissed Teddy's sticky hand instead.

Steve didn't say anything after that, just shoveling down his bowl of cereal. It was obvious that he wasn't settling down, though, just getting silently more wound up. 

"You wanna go for a run?" Sam offered.

Steve smiled humorlessly and set down his spoon, obviously as aware as Sam was that he was in danger of bending the thing in half. "Yeah. But I don't know where Bucky went, and I can't look like I'm chasing him."

He was gripping the table edge like a lifeline now, his knuckles standing out sharply under the skin.

"Tell you what," Sam said, keeping his eyes on the stray Cheerios he was herding back into Teddy's reach. "How about you go upstairs, find the tape in my first aid kit, wrap your hands up real good, and go find a tree that's older than you and see if you can punch it hard enough to make it fall down."

Steve jerked his hand away from the table like it had burned him, and Teddy made a sharp, excited noise in Sam's arms. Steve met Sam's gaze. "Is that, uh... is that a good idea?"

Sam shrugged. "You tell me. Punching things is one of the ways you deal when you're too wound up to hold still, isn't it? And, hey, if you knock a tree down you can chop it up for firewood and Gertie'll be set until Christmas."

"I should..." Steve trailed off, and Sam nodded into the silence. That was one of the hardest things to get your head around, especially for someone like Steve, who expressed himself best in actions. Sometimes there wasn't anything you could _do_ that was any use. Sometimes you just had to do whatever was going to help you stay sane. 

"I'm here, I got Teddy," Sam said. "If Bucky comes back it'll be because he's ready to be here, and we'll be fine if he does that before you're done punching your way through the woods over there. You're no good to anybody when you're vibrating out of your own skin, man."

Steve grimaced, a tight twist of lips nowhere near a smile, as he stared down at the table. He nodded, and went on sitting there for a few more seconds before he stood and came around the table. He kissed Sam, a quick press of lips, and stopped Teddy's lunge toward him. 

"I'll be back soon, I promise." Steve pressed a kiss to Teddy's hair and then extricated himself, grabbing Bucky's boots from the table as he went.

Teddy flung himself halfway over Sam's shoulder, reaching after Steve and making little urgent sounds that were on the way to being sobs. 

Sam poured out more Cheerios. He managed to eat three of them before Teddy noticed what he was doing and twisted around to grab up a handful. Sam kept him busy with Cheerios until he heard Steve's footsteps come back downstairs, heard him go out the front door. 

When Sam figured he was a safe distance away, he looked down at Teddy and said, "I don't know whether we should dread you turning two or thirteen more, but man, you are gonna have a serious genetic predisposition to _drama_."

Teddy just blinked up at him, and Sam tilted his head and added, "Yeah, I mean, hopefully all you got to be dramatic about is not wanting to take naps or liking some cute person at school and not knowing if they like you back. I'm not saying they don't have their reasons. But hopefully you can learn a little bit of chill from somewhere."

"Mih?" Teddy suggested, adding the gestures for _milk_ and _please_.

"Yeah, yeah, life lesson moment over," Sam agreed, just before someone knocked on the door. 

Sam seriously considered tossing Teddy out the back door like the house was on fire, and reflected that they might have to hire an actual professional to teach the kid about chill.

* * *

Steve was nearly back to the house--had brushed most of the bits of bark and dirt off and was starting to unwrap his hands--when he realized that something was wrong. He looked around. Gertie was gone from the garden, and no one was on the back porch, but he could hear a voice wafting from the open windows. An unfamiliar voice.

Steve started running.

He skidded to a halt in the kitchen, letting the screen door slam behind him. Gertie and Sam were sitting at the kitchen table with a dark-haired woman who had a laptop in front of her, a briefcase open on the table beside it. 

"What--where's Teddy?" 

All three of them stared at him for a moment, and then Sam snorted, shaking his head as he stood up to come over to Steve. 

"Teddy's napping," Sam said. "Steve, this is Bernie Rosenthal, she's a lawyer. Natasha asked her to come help us out with getting Teddy a birth certificate and getting Bucky... legally alive, and everything else he's gonna need. Bernie," Sam turned back toward the dark-haired woman and made a showcasing gesture that dripped irony. "Captain America."

Bernie gave him an amused look, and Steve was instantly conscious of being half-dressed, one hand still taped and the other clutching a wad of gauze, sweat running everywhere. To say nothing of the unnecessarily dramatic entrance.

"Ma'am," Steve said. "I, uh... I have bits of a tree in my hair, don't I?"

"Feel free to go get cleaned up," Bernie said, not actually answering the question. "You're not paying me by the hour--or at all, actually, I'm on retainer for the Avengers. So there's no rush."

Steve nodded and edged away until he reached the hallway, and then hurried upstairs, pausing only to peek in at Teddy, who was, as promised, asleep in the crib in the little room where he and Bucky had spent the night. Steve tiptoed back out without waking him or leaving twigs everywhere, and headed into the shower. He scrubbed himself thoroughly, excavating bits of dirt and bark from behind his ears and between his toes, and when he was sure he was clean he got out and hurriedly dried off.

In the bedroom he pulled on his only halfway decent change of clothes. By the time he got back down to the kitchen, everyone had coffee, and he could smell some kind of cinnamon cake baking. Bernie was looking interestedly through an album as Gertie pointed out pictures of Bucky, and Sam had their laptop out and was frowning intently at the screen. 

Steve fixed himself a coffee with plenty of milk and sugar and sat down next to Sam. "So, uh, now that I'm fit for human interaction, maybe we could start again, ma'am?" 

He offered his hand to Bernie when she looked up. "Steve Rogers. I understand you're here to help us out with our family situation."

Bernie smiled, almost a smirk, and shook his hand. "Bernie Rosenthal. I'll tell you right up front that my actual specialty is criminal defense, not family law--the Avengers don't usually have much call for legal representation on domestic matters."

Steve raised his eyebrows as he wrapped his hand back around his coffee. "I wasn't aware that we had much need for criminal defense lawyers, either."

"That is because I do my job," Bernie said firmly. "I have a nice, clean record of never letting anything get to the point of actual criminal prosecution--I suspect Sgt. Barnes is going to make a mess of that, but I and my team will be doing everything we can to make sure that that's only a technicality. I don't intend for him to see the inside of a jail cell, not for one minute."

Steve nodded firmly. "We're in agreement there."

"But there's also a lot to get worked out before then," Sam added. "Just getting him a legal identity, for starters. And Teddy, too."

Bernie nodded. "I've got a few of our people back in New York doing a search for a local lawyer here in Indiana to get the ball rolling on Teddy--to start with, we're going to have to get a family court to award you custody, and determine whether we can simply get a birth certificate issued, as if this were a surrogacy case, or if you're going to need to adopt him. Local counsel will be able to help us make sure we put this in front of the most sympathetic possible judge, and obviously we'll want the rest of our ducks in a row--DNA tests to establish genetic parentage, and so forth."

"I, uh," Steve ran a hand through his hair and glanced over at Sam; he could guess that Sam had been trying to unravel the genetic information from Teddy's files. "I don't know if normal DNA testing will..."

Bernie nodded. "That's a point in our favor, really. If you have some completely novel genetic markers, we can be prepared to have expert testimony to demonstrate that Teddy literally could not be anyone else's child but yours."

Steve winced a little. "That... that sounds like a lot of people knowing exactly who Teddy is. And where he is."

Bernie grimaced and nodded again. "We will do everything we can to petition for closed proceedings on this--there's obviously a compelling interest involved as far as keeping Teddy away from the people who had him for the last year. Family court does handle these things the best they can to keep the children involved safe, Steve. Abusive parents may not seem quite on HYDRA's level to you, but they're just as big a threat to individual kids."

Steve looked away, feeling a rush of helpless shame. He'd read enough stories and news reports about the kinds of things that happened to kids--that were _acknowledged_ to happen to kids, nowadays. It had never seemed like anything he could help much, other than working with charities and funneling money to them as much as he could. But he should have known better than to imagine that Teddy was unique in being in danger.

"Hey," Sam said softly. "Hey, every parent runs into this stuff for the first time when it's their kid, Steve. You're allowed to be worried about keeping Teddy safe."

Steve nodded and forced himself to look up and meet Bernie's eyes again. "I, uh. I got in touch with Teddy's--surrogate? Birth mother? Yesterday. I think if... if we needed her to come to court, or sign something, she would. Saying he's the baby she gave birth to, and all that. She's actually some kind of blood relative of mine on one side of her family and Buck's on the other. Would that... help, if it comes to an adoption?"

Bernie tapped out a few notes on her laptop. "The biological relationship that way will make less difference than your actual genetic relationship to Teddy--but if this comes down to a court declaring that she's the natural parent, then it's a big point in our favor if she's willing to have you adopt him directly from her. Is she married? Her husband may be the presumptive father, in that case..."

Steve nodded. "With three kids, yeah. And... her husband knew she was carrying a baby for a couple--HYDRA wasn't exactly up front with them--so he'd have to be all right with us taking Teddy, wouldn't he?"

"Let us hope," Bernie said firmly. "Things can get weird around kids, but that sounds like the best start we're likely to get."

"Speaking of," Sam added, and Steve looked quickly from him to Gertie, catching his meaning just from the tone. Steve nodded slightly, signaling him to go ahead, but Sam's gaze went quickly to Gertie and he shook his head faintly, leaving it to Steve to break the news.

Steve unwrapped his hand from his coffee cup and laid it over Sam's. "Speaking of being married, Sam and I are planning on it. Very soon." He glanced at Gertie, but she looked amused and unsurprised, so he focused on Bernie again. "We thought it'd simplify things, for getting Teddy taken care of."

Bernie's eyebrows twitched just slightly. "Ah. So you--I had understood that Sgt. Barnes was...?"

"Teddy's biological father," Sam filled in. "Yeah. Steve's the mom. I'm the stepdad, and we all figured--this way, if getting Bucky's situation worked out takes a long time, that doesn't have to slow down the process of getting Teddy squared away with two legal parents."

Bernie nodded and typed faster. "Then, yes, married would be ideal."

Steve looked over at Sam and said, "I... I know there's no knowing when Buck's gonna circle back, but I want to wait for him to be here."

Sam nodded, turning his hand to squeeze Steve's. "There's no waiting period, so once we can get him pointed in the right direction we can do it right away. We need to get our hands on some better clothes, anyway. My mama's gonna give me enough shit for eloping, you better believe I'm at least gonna wear a collared shirt while I do it."

Steve couldn't help smiling, and leaned over to give Sam a quick kiss. "We could, uh... take turns going shopping? We're not supposed to see each other, right?"

Sam snorted, but he was smiling. "I mean, it's not exactly the wedding dress mystique, but sure. We can take turns so you don't have to take Teddy into another store _or_ leave him without one of us to watch him."

Steve grinned back, and then brought his focus back to Bernie. "I know there's probably not that much we can do before he gets back, but--where do we start with Bucky?"

"Well," Bernie said. "That's going to be a much bigger job, and much of it will be up to him, but I have a few thoughts."

* * *

It was only hours before Bucky found himself circling back toward Gertie's house to check that everything was secure. When he did, he spotted his boots, left out by the garden shed, in a spot where he could get to them without being seen from the house.

Bucky turned and pressed his forehead against a tree, struggling with the feeling that stirred up inside him. That was Steve. Steve had known he left without his boots, and had made sure he could get them without coming in. Steve had known that he would come back--and he had come back, so Steve wasn't entirely wrong about him. 

He remembered the urgency of leaving, the fear that had driven him, the certainty that Steve was wrong to trust him. And he remembered the night before, the decision to stay, to trust Sam's arguments and the evidence of Teddy's attachment to him. He had known the procedures for bedtime; Teddy had slept safely in his arms all night and Bucky had given him up when Sam came to take him. All of it had seemed right when it was happening, but it couldn't all _be_ right.

Something had to be true, and stay true, no matter what he forgot or remembered. Something had to be real, and right.

But it wasn't the truth that changed, was it? It wasn't the rest of the world that got confused and forgot or remembered things all out of order. It was him. 

HYDRA had had to wipe his memory over and over to make him their weapon. Whatever they'd used to make him forget the last few months, to forget Teddy, it had worked better than anything else, but it meant the same thing. He remembered, and then they made him forget, again and again and again.

So maybe this was the way back. Maybe he had to remember again and again, every time he forgot what he had chosen. Maybe he had to _choose_ again and again. Run away and come back. _Get knocked down a hundred times, stand up a hundred and one._

That sounded like Steve. And Steve didn't change--even when he looked different, he was the same. He was Steve, and Bucky could trust him. He trusted Steve to protect Teddy, and that had to mean that Steve would protect Teddy from _him_ if that was necessary. 

Bucky just had to go pick up his boots and go inside. He'd stripped off his socks somewhere, and now his feet were too dirty to put inside his boots--or to step inside Gertie's house, but there was a long hose coiled up by the spigot at the back of the house, for watering the little herb garden by the porch. 

He was moving then, before he spared another thought. He had a target, an objective. He had to get his feet clean before he could go inside. He grabbed his boots on the way and broke cover without a thought, walking straight toward the hose. There was a pistol-gripped sprayer on the end, so he turned the spigot on and loosened a few coils as he waited for the water to flow through the length of the green tubing.

He aimed the hose at the grass and experimented with the sprayer, working out how tightly he had to squeeze to get a controlled jet of water, then balanced on one foot and aimed the water at the other. 

A rush of memory flooded him: standing on concrete, on tile, under fluorescent lights, in near darkness, and feeling that impact of pressurized water on his skin. Watching not dirt but blood swirl away. Turning this way and that according to barked orders, trying only to keep his face away from the spray.

Someone was calling to him, and his grip tightened on the sprayer, turning the jet of cold water needle-sharp. He gasped for breath, and--

"Wee-oo!"

Bucky's head jerked up, and he stared at Teddy; for a second he couldn't see anything else, and then he put it together. Steve was holding Teddy on his hip as Teddy reached for him. Steve's other hand held a ragged towel.

Bucky dropped the hose, cutting off the spray of water instantly. He looked down, trying to ignore Teddy's escalating babble, and swished his feet through the sodden grass, washing the worst of the dirt off. 

He watched Steve's shadow come closer, and raised his hands to take Teddy when Steve got close enough. Teddy smacked a couple of times at his shoulder and then grabbed his hair and tugged, and Bucky flinched and then froze, his free hand curling into a fist. He couldn't--he didn't dare--

"Hey, don't pull your pop's hair like that," Steve said quietly, stepping in closer. Bucky closed his eyes as Steve caught Teddy's hands and rescued Bucky's hair from his grip. "That's not nice, Teddy. Pop's gonna think you aren't happy to see him if you treat him like that."

"Steve," Bucky said quietly. He didn't know what to say after that, didn't know what to do. He couldn't even clean his damn feet off without losing himself.

"Come on over to the porch and dry off," Steve said, his voice just as low. "I'll put the hose away. I picked up some new clothes for you while I was out, so you can change into clean things if you want."

The worn softness of the towel brushed against the back of his clenched fist, and Bucky exhaled and took it, carrying it and Teddy over to the porch steps. He sat down on the lowest one and considered setting Teddy down for half a second, before he realized that Teddy was clinging to him with both hands.

"Okay, baby bear," Bucky murmured, and got on with cleaning his feet off as well as he could with one free hand. After a moment Steve came over to help, and then Teddy squirmed around in his grip, sticking his chubby bare feet out in Steve's direction and waving them around.

"You too, huh," Steve said, but he gamely rubbed a corner of the towel over Teddy's feet, making the baby shriek happily. Bucky couldn't help smiling at that, and at the happiness on Steve's face as he played with the kid.

Maybe it wouldn't be that bad. He'd freaked out over the hose, but Steve had found him before he could do anything in particular about it, and Teddy had broken him out of it. He hadn't hurt anyone, hadn't even tried.

He realized when he felt Teddy tugging on his shirt that Steve had stopped the towel game and was watching him silently.

"Ready to come in?"

Bucky shrugged, offering Steve a grimace that came nowhere near a real smile. "Dunno if I'm ever gonna be ready to find out what kind of clothes you bought me."

"They're _nice_ ," Steve insisted, standing up and offering a hand. Bucky pulled himself up and turned to climb the steps, Steve following. "You need something presentable to wear."

Bucky stopped short on the top step, looking over as Steve stepped up even with him. He needed something presentable to wear... for Steve and Sam's wedding? He glanced down at Teddy, who had a bit of dried milk crusted at the corner of his mouth and was wearing ordinary soft baby clothes. "What, today?"

"Nah, the clerk's office will be closing soon. Tomorrow, though, if you're up to it?"

Bucky stared at him, trying to find words for all the things wrong with that. "You--you can't just--"

Steve's eyebrows drew down slightly, the stubbornness starting to set in. Bucky shook his head and turned away from him, going into the house. 

Gertie and Sam were inside, at the table, which was half-covered in shopping bags. Teddy lunged curiously toward them, and Steve hastily reached between them to pull out a shiny metal bowl, offering it to Teddy, who ignored it completely while trying to tip himself out of Bucky's arms.

"Put one on the floor--a paper one, with stuff he can't break," Bucky said, and Steve reached into a paper shopping bag and pulled out a couple of plastic-wrapped dress shirts, leaving behind a drift of tissue paper. He set it down on the floor and Bucky set Teddy beside it to explore or demolish to his heart's content. 

"There have to be _flowers_ ," Gertie was saying to Sam. "Not a bouquet, but you need to mark the occasion properly."

"Thank you," Bucky said to his sister, and turned back toward Steve to pick up the thread of what they'd been talking about. "Who are you even inviting, on a day's notice?"

Steve looked to Sam for help and evidently didn't find any, because his face set into stubborn lines. "You and Teddy and Gert. That's all we need for it to be legal, Buck, and that's all we're worrying about right now. We can have a big party later--Tony or Sam's mom or both of them are probably gonna insist on that at some point."

Sam made a small, despairing noise, and Steve shot a quick smile his way. "You know she will, Sam. I mean, if she doesn't disown us."

"We're bringing an instant grandchild, we're not getting disowned," Sam said, shaking his head. "Besides, if she disowned us she couldn't spend the next twenty years giving us shit for eloping."

Bucky saw the idea of _twenty years_ and his mother-in-law hit Steve somewhere stubbornness couldn't protect him, and he had to smile a little at that. _This_ was real, something Bucky couldn't touch, couldn't ruin, whatever he forgot or remembered. Steve was getting married; Steve was getting the happy ending he deserved, with a fella who just about deserved him.

Steve focused on Bucky again, his expression turning earnest. "It's for Teddy, Buck. We're going to have to go to court to make everything official, and Bernie--our lawyer--she says everything will go smoother if we're married first. Not that that's the only reason, but it's why we're in a hurry like this."

Bucky let out a sigh. "As long as there's flowers--and dinner after, with cake?"

"We'll go up to the Kopper Kettle," Gertie put in firmly, and Bucky had an instant impression of the most rare and special occasions, nothing a kid got to come along to, and nodded approval. 

"And rings," Bucky added. "Did you get rings?"

Sam and Steve looked suddenly equally caught out, which Bucky thought meant that neither of them had and neither of them was sure if the other meant to surprise him. 

"It's a _wedding_ ," Bucky said. " _Your_ wedding. You have to have rings!"

"We could... tomorrow..." Steve said hesitantly. "I guess... the wedding's going to be public record anyway, so shopping for rings won't really..."

Gertie huffed and said, "Bucky, go on in my room and get Ma's jewelry box, it's on the dresser."

Bucky nodded and glanced down to be sure Teddy was still occupied--he'd pulled the shopping bag over and crawled half inside it, and Bucky was reasonably sure he couldn't choke himself on tissue paper, or at least not without Steve or Sam noticing. He headed out of the kitchen and up the stairs, taking them two at a time.

Gertie's room had been their grandmother's once--the master bedroom, suiting the lady of the house. It still had a lingering ghost of the same scent Bucky remembered, and it was entirely natural to look at the heavy old dresser and see his mother's jewelry box sitting there, between a few silver-framed photos and a box of tissues.

It was only when he reached out for it left-handed that it really hit him that this wasn't normal, that he hadn't come to this moment, picking up his mother's jewelry box from his sister's dresser, in anything like a normal way. He glanced at himself in the mirror and fixed his messy hair before he could think anything else about his reflection.

He shook his head. He didn't have time for this. Gertie had asked for the jewelry box, for Steve and Sam. His Ma had died a long time ago, his grandmother even longer. 

Bucky picked up the box with his right hand and cradled it carefully against his stomach as he walked back downstairs.

Steve and Sam were sorting through the contents of the shopping bags when he came back down, neither of them paying much attention to Teddy, who was now scooting around the floor with his upper half inside the paper bag, giggling to himself. Bucky smiled down at him as he passed the jewelry box to Gertie, who sat down with it at a cleared space at the table. 

She opened one of the lower drawers, revealing a little velvet-lined compartment containing several rings--a couple of them silver, the rest gold, all plain thick bands sized for a man's hand. 

"Everybody wants an heirloom engagement ring, but the wedding bands just pile up," Gertie said. "And the men in this family have always been farmers, so they hardly wore their rings to begin with."

She gathered up a few of them into her hand and Bucky squinted at them, wondering if he would even recognize...

"Becca took Pop's ring when he passed," Gertie said casually, without looking up. "These are a few generations of Elkins' that wound up with me through Harry. And I keep _his_ ring in my jewelry box. So these aren't carrying any special meaning that I know of. I don't think any of 'em are even engraved."

She held out her palm toward Steve and Sam, and they looked at each other, at Gertie, and then at Bucky. He just gestured back toward the rings--this was what he'd brought them down here for, after all. 

Steve looked down first, plucking a ring from Gertie's palm while Sam was still looking at Bucky. He dropped his gaze after another second, stirring through the rings while Steve was trying on the one he'd picked out. 

Sam glanced at Steve's choice, and Bucky saw a little shock go through him at the sight of a gold band fitting snug on Steve's left ring finger; he felt it in the pit of his own stomach, joy and loss all at once. Steve was going to be safe and happy and _not his_.

But Steve already wasn't his, and hadn't been for a long time, and Sam had promised to share. Bucky wasn't losing anything, not really.

Sam recovered first, plucking out a ring that matched well with Steve's and trying it on. It stuck at his knuckle, and Sam worked at it for a second and then tugged it free, frowning at the other rings. 

They were all the same size or smaller, Bucky could see. 

"Here," he said, holding out his hand for Sam's ring, and Sam handed it over without hesitation. Bucky leaned close, gauging the size of Sam's ring finger, and then slid the ring onto his own left hand, pushing it down until it caught against the unyielding metal of his finger. He pushed, then, carefully distributing the force of his flesh fingers around the diameter, so that the gold gave way in a smooth stretch, not concentrated at any one point. 

When the ring reached the correct diameter, Bucky slid it back out and scrutinized it, then used his metal fingers to smooth out a thin spot and buff away a couple of scratches. He handed the ring back to Sam looking shiny and new, and Sam took it without hesitation, sliding it on. The gold looked warm and bright against his dark skin, even more striking than the ring on Steve's hand.

"Hey," Steve said, working the ring off his own finger. "Mine's a little tight, loosen it for me?"

Bucky rolled his eyes at the transparency, but he took the ring and gave it the same treatment, stretching it by a token increment and smoothing its edges, polishing away a few scratches before he handed it back. When Steve put it on it slid more easily but still seemed to fit securely on his finger, and it looked as bright as Sam's.

The pang of loss didn't come back when he looked at it, even when Steve and Sam interlaced their fingers with a dopey grin and leaned in to exchange a kiss. There was only gladness, now.

But Bucky's fingers kept going back to the bare metal of his own left ring finger, touching the spot where he'd so briefly worn each of their rings. 

He shoved his hands into his pockets before Steve or Sam--or worse, Gertie--could catch him at it, and then Steve was holding both of their rings out to him. "Here, best man. You're supposed to keep these for us until we need 'em."

Bucky took the rings and tucked them into his pocket, carefully not looking at the drawer of Gertie's jewelry box to see how many were left. "Guess we're all set for tomorrow, then?"

"Just about," Steve agreed, looking at him for a moment, and then he tugged Bucky into a hug and said, "I still have to show you what I picked out for you to wear."


	14. Chapter 14

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is only the first half of what I had outlined as Chapter 14, but someone mentioned to me the other day that they thought this story was abandoned, so I figured I should probably post SOMETHING, because I swear! It's not abandoned at all! 
> 
> So, wedding day in this chapter, wedding NIGHT next time!

Steve woke up on his wedding day with Sam snugged up against his back, and the first thing he saw was the early light glinting on the wedding band he had left on the nightstand. 

It would have been less ambiguous, as a start to the day, if the ring had been intended for him or Sam to wear, but Bucky, as best man, was holding on to their rings. This was a third one, which Steve had taken from Gertie's hand while Bucky was occupied with resizing Steve's. Sam and Gertie had both seen him do it--Sam had nodded, smiling a little, when Steve set the ring on the nightstand before they went to bed--so he figured he had everyone's blessing to think ahead.

He didn't know how far ahead he was thinking, or what exactly the ring was going to mean when the time came, but it was going to be Bucky's. He knew that much. The rest would probably sort itself out, if he was just patient. 

Steve wasn't exactly known for his patience, and a part of him knew that he'd waited much too long already, but he did know that Bucky wasn't ready for whatever that was going to be. Not yet. Until he was, Steve could just hold on to the ring--a promise to himself and to Sam--and to Bucky even if he didn't know it yet. They were going to get this right, the three of them. Whatever that was going to look like in the long run, someday they were going to be happy, and part of one family, no matter how strangely shaped. 

Sam nuzzled at the back of his neck, making a sleepy inquiring noise that snapped Steve back to today. _Their wedding day._

Steve reached a hand back, sliding it over Sam's hip and the swell of his ass. The tone of Sam's next sleepy noise was a little different.

"You awake?"

Sam snuggled closer, rubbing up against Steve enough to show that at least one part of him was definitely up.

Steve grinned. "Let's go for a run."

Sam groaned, but he didn't actually try to keep Steve in bed. Steve stole kisses every time he lapped Sam running around the quiet country roads. 

Bernie showed up later in the morning to talk to Bucky--and only Bucky, confidentially. They wound up sitting out on the front porch, since keeping Teddy from seeing Bucky when he wasn't allowed to _go_ to Bucky was the only way to keep him reasonably content. Gertie went out to get her hair done and have lunch with one of her daughters, which left Sam and Steve wrangling Teddy for most of the day.

It was like some strange through-the-looking-glass version of being in combat: instead of sudden bursts of violence to break up the long stretches of tedium, he kept finding himself ambushed by how much he loved Teddy or Sam.

Well. Being in combat with Bucky had been like that, sometimes, though the love had often arrived in combination with the violence, which had been terrifying. He didn't even want to think about what it would be like going into battle with Sam at his side after this--or Bucky, for that matter.

By the time Teddy made his spirited attempt to fall down the basement stairs--Steve managed to catch him two steps down--he thought it was actually more or less the same all around. 

It wasn't long after that before Gertie returned, having picked up the flowers she insisted on, and Bucky came inside, declaring it time to get dressed. Bucky took charge of Teddy, leaving Steve and Sam to get ready together, not that either of them was doing anything elaborate. Sam had already trimmed his goatee when he showered after their run; Steve ran a little product through his hair, and that was that. 

They were both wearing clothes that reminded Steve of the second time they'd met, when Steve went to find Sam at the VA. Neatly pressed khakis and button-down shirts, Steve's light blue, Sam's pale purple. The red roses Gertie had arranged would look striking against each.

They met up with Bucky, wearing darker brown pants and a dark blue shirt, in the hallway. He'd somehow already wrangled Teddy into his outfit of white collared pullover and light blue shorts, though he still had the little white shoes and socks tucked into one pocket. The toes of Buck's boots shone from under the hems of his new pants, freshly polished to a mirror finish.

Steve looked up from them to Bucky, and he smiled crookedly and said, "Had to keep my hands busy somehow, talking to Ms. Rosenthal. And I'm gonna want my combat boots on when I take you out on the dance floor."

Steve snorted softly. "Your toes are safe with me, Buck, I swear."

Bucky smiled back for a second, then dropped his gaze and touched his free hand to the pocket not bulging with Teddy's shoes and socks. "I got the rings, too. All set."

Steve did not touch his own pocket, but squeezed Bucky's arm. "Then I guess we should do this, huh?"

Bucky looked away altogether, but he smiled, and that was going to have to be enough for now.

* * *

It wasn't anything like Sam would ever have imagined his wedding being, but then this year had been full of things he'd never imagined. His whole life was pretty bizarre these days, and of all the ways he could imagine marrying _Steve Rogers_ , who also happened to be _Captain America_ , this seemed like one of the better possibilities.

The clerk's eyes had gone a little wide when they filled out the paperwork for the marriage license, but she held it together until she was handing over the paperwork and squeaked a little as she said, "Congratulations!" 

The actual ceremony, half an hour later after a little wandering around to find the right judge's courtroom, took even less time than getting the license. There were only six people in the room--the judge, Sam and his bridegroom, and their witnesses: Bucky, Gertie, and Teddy, who spent the whole time crawling around. Bucky passed the rings to the judge and then trailed Teddy around the perimeter of the room while also never turning his eyes away from the ceremony he was witnessing. 

Sam had written out the vows the way they wanted them said, and the judge read them out scrupulously. Sam couldn't help glancing in Bucky's direction at the point when Steve wasn't asked to say _forsaking all others_ , but Steve squeezed his hand, and his eyes never strayed from Sam as he made his promises. Sam held on tight, and made the same promises back, and that was it: they were married.

Holy shit, they were _married_. He was stunned, and a little teary-eyed, all through the lingering, careful kiss, and then they were back in action.

They signed the paperwork, and then Steve scooped Teddy up so that Bucky could sign as a witness, and Bucky offered his arm to Gertie so she could sign too, and that was it. 

Well, almost. They might have (temporarily) dodged the big wedding reception party, but Gertie still insisted on taking them to dinner at what Sam gathered was the one kinda fancy place in Shelby County. 

"And don't worry about being gawked at," Gertie added. "Hannah's waiting tables this summer, and the manager's one of her Pettit cousins. They fixed a private room."

There was no arguing with that. And the private room was nice, if sized for about five times as many people as their little group. There was a piano in one corner, and French doors leading out to a veranda. Hannah flagged them down there before they went into the main doors, saving them from being seen by anyone in the restaurant at all. Someone had pushed the three unused tables to the edges of the room and set the fourth with a bouquet of red roses in the center, safely out of reach of the high chair at one end of the table.

Hannah poured drinks, asked if they wanted anything from the bar, and promised to be back soon with appetizers. 

There was an odd little silent moment when they were all at a table, eyeing each other over nice place settings and a floral centerpiece, and then Bucky sat back in his chair, looking past them to the open space in the middle of the room. He still had Teddy in his lap, not bothering with the high chair, and he said, "You know what this looks like to me, Stevie?"

Steve smirked and said, "Shame we don't have anybody to play the piano if you're busy dancing."

Sam raised his eyebrows and tugged his phone out of his pocket. "Welcome to the miracle of recorded music, gentlemen."

Bucky brightened. "You two gotta dance first, that's only right. Pick out a good one, huh?"

Sam opened and closed his mouth and then, figuring it was honestly only appropriate, cued up _Trouble Man_. Steve laughed at the sound of the first few notes, but he helped Sam find the best place to set the phone and gamely opened his arms in the middle of their little dance floor.

Sam wasn't expecting much, but even so he barely lasted a minute before he had his forehead on Steve's shoulder, laughing helplessly at how wooden and terrible Steve was at dancing. He could feel Steve's answering laugh under his hands as they settled into an almost stationary sway, and picked his head up just to say, "I've _seen_ you move, I know you have more rhythm than this. You have to have your shield in your hand to find a beat?"

"I dunno, I was always big on the one-go-two-three count," Steve said. "Shield stuff, that's just... instinct."

Sam shook his head and kissed Steve, smiling at the sound of two people applauding--and one enthusiastic baby shrieking--from the table. 

When the first track ended, Sam picked up his phone and thumbed over to his list of playlists, offering it to Steve with his eyebrows raised. Steve glanced at Bucky and then at Sam, tilting the screen to show Sam when he made a selection.

Sam nodded--"At Last" was goddamn right, when it came to those two--and moved over to the table to take Teddy from Bucky. He stayed on his feet as the song started up, swaying a little and watching as Steve stepped into Bucky's arms. There was a silent moment of push-and-shove like they were about to stop and arm-wrestle over whose hands went where, but Bucky won after a few seconds and started leading Steve firmly around the little bit of dancefloor. 

Steve... went, for Bucky, trusting his guidance, his eyes never straying from Bucky's. He still wasn't _good_ , but he didn't hesitate. Sam couldn't take his eyes away from them, and in his peripheral vision he could see Gertie sitting utterly still with one hand to her mouth; she had to have just traveled back in time about seventy years to some alternate universe where this happened when it should have and never could have.

Even Teddy was mostly still. When he started to squirm and whine, Sam started bouncing him a little and murmured, "Your dads..."

He hesitated, considering the whole point of this, and what they meant to make real tomorrow. He might as well start saying it right, hadn't he? 

"Your _other two_ dads," Sam corrected himself. "Are really damn crazy about each other, baby boy. We don't use that word lightly because we don't stigmatize mental illness in our family, but your dad and pop are a whole other thing about each other and that thing is _crazy_."

Teddy looked up at him curiously, so Sam started humming along real low, swaying and shuffling to the beat with Teddy leaning into his shoulder. He was focused on keeping Teddy quiet until the song ended--and then studiously not looking up when it ended and so did the tap and slide of Steve and Bucky's feet--so Sam was caught off guard when Teddy was lifted out of his arms.

By Steve.

"Go on," Steve said, his eyes only a little shiny and his smile genuine. "The best man's decided if there's no bride to dance with he needs to dance with both of us to cover the bases."

Sam raised his eyebrows. "Does your husband get a say in that?"

Steve's smile widened, and he leaned in to press a quick kiss to the corner of Sam's mouth. " _You_ tell him no, then," Steve murmured.

Sam glared after him for a second and then went over to Bucky, who was peering down at Sam's phone, forehead wrinkled in thought. 

"Find something interesting?" Sam asked. 

Of course he wasn't going to say no. Not when Bucky wanted something so... well, human, and when Steve obviously wanted him to do this. He'd known he was marrying Bucky's boyfriend; he knew Steve had that extra ring in his pocket right this very moment. 

"I think..." Bucky tilted the phone toward him, showing the song he was looking at. "I think I know this one? But... I don't think that's the right singer. Or. The one I know, anyway."

Sam smiled. "Yeah, it's a cover--a medley, too, actually, I don't have the whole proper title in there. You might like it."

And what could be more appropriate, really, than a cover song, mashing things up into something new? That was what they were doing here, after all--old things joined together and made new. _What a wonderful world_ indeed.

Sam hit play and held up his hands, letting Bucky decide whose hands would go where. To Sam's surprise, Bucky settled his hand on Sam's shoulder, letting Sam hold his waist and lead. 

"You're the one who knows the song for sure," Bucky muttered, still frowning as the first ukulele chords played. 

"You'll get it," Sam assured him, squeezing Bucky's hand as he started them in an easy little rhythm, plenty of hips and swaying to go with the hula style of the song. 

_Somewhere over the rainbow, way up high..._

Bucky's frown eased, and he relaxed into it, finding the rhythm and dancing with Sam rather than just letting him lead. A few seconds later Sam felt his breath catch and followed Bucky's gaze over to where Steve was stepping in little almost-rhythmic motions with Teddy on his shoulder.

Sam let himself laugh out loud, and Bucky muttered, "You know the sad thing is, he's better dancing with the kid than he does with either of us."

"Teddy doesn't judge me," Steve said serenely, not even pretending he hadn't heard. 

Bucky actually did laugh out loud at that, his head tipping back as he shook in Sam's arms, still never losing the rhythm as they moved together.

_Oh,_ Sam thought, unable to take his eyes off Bucky. _Oh, no. This is awkward timing._

Well. All things considered, it was less awkward than it could be. It wasn't like Steve was going to _mind_. It was just weird to be realizing, not more than an hour after he'd gotten married, how strongly he felt this mingled attraction and... care... for his husband's boyfriend. 

Thinking of the word _husband_ made him look toward Steve, only to find him smiling besottedly down at Teddy, swinging in easy little circles while Teddy beamed up at him, wriggling happily in his grip. 

When Bucky went quiet, Sam looked back at him to find him watching Sam with an expression Sam couldn't read. His eyes were intent, but his mouth crooked up in a half-smile. 

Sam pulled him into a little spin and Bucky followed, stepping in just a little closer as they went on dancing. Sam thought about that ring in Steve's pocket, and thought that he wouldn't mind taking a turn carrying it sometimes. Just until they needed it.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> In case you are not familiar with it or didn't recognize the description: [this is what Sam and Bucky are dancing to.](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V1bFr2SWP1I) (Sam has it in iTunes as "Somewhere Over the Rainbow," which is why it caught Bucky's eye.) Thank you again to the Tumblr anon who suggested it when I was stuck! <3

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [Wee-oo!](https://archiveofourown.org/works/7332580) by [coynsundry](https://archiveofourown.org/users/coynsundry/pseuds/coynsundry)




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